BH 

39 
A4- 


FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D,  ROCKEFELLEK- 


THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE:  ITS 

MEANING  IN  A  FUNCTIONAL 

PSYCHOLOGY 


A  DISSERTATION 

submitted  to  the  faculty  of  the   graduate  school   of   arts 
and  literature  of  the  university  of  chicago  in  candi- 
dacy for  the  degree   of  doctor  of  philosophy 

(department  of  philosophy) 


BY 

ELIZABETH  KEMPER  ADAMS 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY   OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1907 


Xtbc  mnivcvBit^  ot  Cbicaao 

FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKBPBLLKR 


THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE:  ITS 

MEANING  IN  A  FUNCTIONAL 

PSYCHOLOGY 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED    TO    THE    FACULTY    OF    THE    GRADUATE    SCHOOL     OF    ARTS 
AND    LITERATURE    OF    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    CHICAGO    IN    CANDI- 
DACY   FOR    THE    DEGREE     OF    DOCTOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY 

(department  of  philosophy) 


BY 

ELIZABETH  KEMPER  ADAMS,  Ph.D. 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY   OF   CHICAGO  PRESS 

1907 


CJOPTBIGHT  1906  BT 

The  Univebsity  of  Chicago 


Published  January)  1907 


Compoaed  and  Printed  By 

The  Univeriity  of  Chicago  Preas, 

Chicago,  Ulinoii,  U.  S.  A. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Part     I.    The  Place  of  the  Aesthetic  Experience 5 

I.  Introduction 5 

n.  The  Functional  Position 6 

m.  The  General  Characteristics  of  the  Aesthetic  Experience  .     .  19 

IV.  Previous  Work  in  Aesthetics 24 

V.  Preliminary  Definitions 26 

VI.  The  "Aesthetic  Moment"  in  the  Reflective  Process  ...  28 

Part  II.    The  Social  Aspects  of  the  Aesthetic  Experience     .     .  37 

I.  Typical  Aesthetic  Periods  in  the  History  of  the  Race        .  37 

n.  Aesthetic  Origins  in  the  Race        47 

m.  The  Social  Psychology  of  the  Aesthetic  Experience             .  65 

Part  HI.    Specific  Aesthetic  Categories  and  Types  of  Aesthetic 

Experience 87 

I.  The  Specific  Aesthetic  Categories 87 

n.  The  Types  of  Aesthetic  Experience 96 

Part  IV.    Some   Philosophical  Implications  of  the  Aesthetic 

Experience 108 

Index 113 


161425 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/aestheticexperieOOadamrich 


OF  TtiL. 

UNIVERSITY 

OF  . 


PART  I     ^  .  '_  .  -V  ^     ^ 

THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 
I.      INTRODUCTION 

Functional  psychology  as  a  method  for  the  reformulation  in  terms  of 
concrete  experience  of  both  psychologic  and  philosophic  problems  has 
hitherto  been  focused  on  those  types  of  conscious  experience  the  recon- 
structive character  and  bearings  of  which  are  most  obvious.  In  the  field 
of  psychology  proper  it  has  dealt  with  the  act  of  attention;  in  logic,  with 
the  judgment  process;  in  ethics,  with  the  winning  of  new  ends  for  con- 
duct; in  metaphysics,  with  problems  of  epistemology  rather  than  with 
problems  of  ontology.  Although  postulating  the  more  immediate  and 
direct  forms  of  experience  as  marking  the  limits  of  every  reconstructive 
process  and  furnishing  the  key  to  its  explanation,  and  although  pointing 
out  the  continual  disintegration  and  redintegration  of  one  type  of  experience 
into  the  other,  it  has  nevertheless  treated  immediate,  satisfactorily  "work- 
ing" experience  only  incidentally  and  with  reference  to  the  group  of  prob- 
lems just  mentioned;  and  has  made,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  detailed  study 
of  its  various  aspects  and  problems. 

This  emphasis  is  due,  no  doubt,  partly  to  the  inherent  difficulty  of 
analyzing  immediate  experience,  since  it  functions  as  a  whole  and  there- 
fore without  revealing  its  constituent  elements;  partly  to  the  influences 
under  which  functional  psychology  began  to  take  shape  as  a  system;  and 
partly  to  the  newness  of  the  whole  method,  which  is,  in  fact,  only  just 
becoming  aware  of  its  full  implications,  and  has  not  yet  had  time  to  state, 
much  less  to  solve,  all  its  problems.  But  now,  on  the  one  hand,  its  own 
achievements  are  pushing  it  on  to  further  inquiry  into  its  assumptions, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  certain  familiar  and  frequently  discussed  kinds 
of  experience  are  crying  for  investigation  and  restatement. 

Conspicuous  among  these  last  is  .the  aesthetic  experience,  a  mental 
attitude  as  distinct  and  luminous  in  actual  life  as  it  is  baffling  and  opaque 
for  theory.  At  first  sight  it  offers  some  paradoxes  peculiarly  difficult  of  reso- 
lution from  the  functional  point  of  view.'^  It  accordingly  challenges  atten- 
tion as  a  sort  of  test  case,  and  invites  study  for  the  sake  of  the  functional 
position  in  general,  no  less  than  because  of  its  intrinsic  interest.  While  I 
shall  not  attempt,  in  this  discussion,  to  solve  any  of  the  vexing  problems  of 

I  Cf.  F.  H.  Bradley,  "On  Truth  and  Practice,"  Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  320, 
334,  335- 

S 


1^ 


...6......      V   ;.  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

aesthetics,  yet  I  venture  to  hope  that  a  somewhat  fresh  mode  of  approach 
and  an  endeavor  to  deal  with  them  in  connection  with  other  problems  may 
set  them  in  a  new  light,  if  only  by  doing  away  with  their  isolation. 

I  shall  devote  the  first  part  of  my  study  to  a  preliminary  sur\'ey  of  the 
functional  position  and  to  an  account  of  the  commonly  recognized  char- 
acteristics of  the  aesthetic  experience,  bringing  the  two  into  some  sort  of 
provisional  relation  through  the  pointing-out  of  an  essentially  aesthetic 
moment  or  stage  in  the  activity  of  reflective  thinking,  the  process  most 
fully  analyzed  by  functional  psychology  and  revealing  most  satisfactorily 
the  complex  make-up  of  concrete  experience.  Upon  this  placing  of  the 
aesthetic  I  shall  base  my  working  hypothesis  of  the  aesthetic  as  a  sign  and 
"function"  of  full  and  successful  mental  operation.  In  Part  II  I  shall 
seek  to  corroborate  this  view  by  turning  from  individual  to  race  experience 
and  presenting  briefly  the  social  situation  in  some  of  the  most  striking 
"aesthetic  periods"  of  history,  together  with  a  review  of  the  probable 
social  origins  of  the  aesthetic  experience.  This  survey  will  lead  directly  to 
the  statement  and  development  of  the  thesis  that  the  aesthetic  finds  its 
fullest  meaning  and  explanation  as  a  category  of  social  psychology,  and  to 
a  discussion  from  this  point  of  view  of  some  of  the  disputed  points  in  aesthe- 
tic doctrine  and  of  some  of  the  current  aesthetic  theories.  In  Part  III  I 
shall  endeavor  to  test  my  hypothesis  still  further,  and  to  justify  my  conclu- 
sions by  inquiring  how  far  the  conventional  aesthetic  categories  and  types 
lend  themselves  to  such  interpretation.  In  Part  IH I  shall  point  out  briefly 
some  philosophic  implications  of  this  position. 

n.      THE  FUNCTIONAL  POSITION 

"Functional  psychology'"  is  a  current  name  for  a  method  of  looking  at 
the  facts  of  conscious  experience  that  is  not  yet  ripe  for  exhaustive  definition. 
Its  aim  may  be  roughly  stated  as  an  attempt  to  define  mental  phenomena 
in  terms  of  the  control  of  experience.  It  strives  to  revivify  psychological 
abstractions  by  restoring  them  to  their  original  bed  in  concrete  human 
action.  It  elevates  to  a  postulate  of  scientific  thinking  a  truth  that  has 
always  been  taken  for  granted  in  everyday  life — that  nobody  ever  thinks  or 
feels  or  acts  at  large,  but  always  with  reference  to  a  particular  end,  growing 
out  of  a  particular  set  of  conditions  and  realized  in  a  particular  kind  of 
behavior.  It  insists  upon  the  continuity  of  experience,  but  lays  stress 
upon  the  fact  that  this  experience  is  not  to  be  thought  of  "in  the  lump," 
as  something  fixed  in  quantity  and  quality,  but  as  in  process  of  continual 
reconstitution,  consolidation,  and  enlargement  through  the  setting-up  and 
carrying-out  of  new  ends.     It  points  out  that  all  forms  of  consciousness 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  7 

arc  to  a  greater  or  less  degree  purposive,  anticipatory  in  reference,  looking 
forward  to  new  modes  of  action;  that  reconstructions  and  recapitulations 
of  past  experiences  always  occur  in  connection  with  this  management  of 
the  future;  that  the  real  test  and  standard  of  any  conscious  experience 
reside,  not  within  itself,  but  in  the  conduct  to  which  it  leads.  It  holds 
that  valid  psychological  generalization  does  not  consist  in  classifying 
mental  activities  entirely  apart  from  the  situations  in  which  they  arise  and 
terminate,  but  rather  in  accordance  with  the  typical  features  in  various 
groups  of  situations.  To  put  it  briefly,  functional  psychology  is  a  psychol- 
ogy of  the  entire  act,  and  not  merely  of  that  phase  of  the  act  that  is  com- 
monly identified  as  mental.^ 

Such  a  conception  of  the  scope  and  character  of  psychology  obviously 
breaks  down  the  hard  and  fast  distinction  generally  made  between  psy- 
chology proper — the  science  describing  and  analyzing  mental  processes  as 
such,  without  regard  to  the  value  of  their  outcome — and  the  so-called 
normative  or  valuational  disciplines  of  logic,  ethics,  and  aesthetics,  dealing 
respectively,  it  is  said,  with  value  in  knowledge,  value  in  conduct,  and 
value  in  appreciation  or  feeling — that  is,  with  the  worth  of  mental  operations 
rather  than  with  the  operations  themselves.     While,  in  the  interests  of  a 
practical  division  of  labor,  it  is  undeniably  useful  and  even  necessary  to 
keep  these  fields  distinct  from  psychology,  and  while  in  each  field  the 
investigator  approaches  his  problems  at  a  dififerent  angle  and  with  different 
stress,  yet  from  the  point  of  view  here  sketched  it  is  out  of  the  question  to 
consider  psychological  processes  apart  from  their  source  and  their  issue  in 
conduct,  their  place  in  the  experiential  series.    A  psychology  that  does  not 
take  into  account  this  backward  and  forward  reference  to  conduct  is  doomed 
f^  to  remain  at  the  level  of  a  merely  descriptive  science.' 
^  I       In  other  words,  conscious  processes  have  no  significance,  no  reason  for 
i<    '  being,  aside  from  the  work  they  do,  the  use  they  serve  in  the  upbuilding  of 
^  /  our  world  of  concrete  values.     All  forms  of  consciousness  whatever  are 
/        possessed  of  meaning,  of  reference  to  something  beyond,  and  the  "norma- 
tive disciplines"   represent  only  formulations  of  the  most  conspicuous 
instances  of  such  values.     In  the  workings  of  habit,  in  the  countless  small 
determinations  and  adjustments  of  daily  life,  even  in  vague  organic  feelings 
of  comfort  and  discomfort,  there  is  always  some  purposive  coloring,  some 

»  A  fundamental  statement  of  this  view  is  given  in  Professor  John  Dewey's  "  Reflex 
Are  Concept  in  Psychology,"  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  III. 

'  For  an  admirable  discussion  of  the  relations  of  psychology  and  the  normative 
disciplines  see  Professor  J.  R.  Angell's  paper,  "The  Relations  of  Structural  and 
Functional  Psychology  to  Philosophy,"  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XII,  No.  3. 


8  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

attitude  or  adaptation  of  the  organism  with  respect  to  the  situation  in  which 
it  finds  itself,  and  thus  directly  or  indirectly  with  respect  to  its  own  conduct 
in  the  immediate  future.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  value  always  presents 
itself  to  the  mind  as  an  end.  It  is  frequently  inherent  in  the  activity  as  a 
whole,  and  detaches  itself  only  for  the  observer,  the  psychologist,  not  for 
the  person  involved  in  the  experience.  To  state  it  in  terms  of  a  distinction 
often  made  nowadays:  consciousness  is  always  valuational  psychologically; 
it  is  valuational  psychically  only  under  appropriate  conditions,  which  I 
shall  discuss  later. 

With  this  limitation  we  may  describe  consciousness  as  awareness  of 
values,  or,  perhaps  more  cautiously,  as  registration  of  values.  This  descrip- 
tion implies  two  characteristics  of  consciousness  that  are  often  emphasized — 
its  efficiency  as  an  agency  of  control  and  as  an  agency  of  selection ;  in  other 
words,  its  backward  and  its  forward  reference.  In  our  new  eagerness  to 
point  out  that  consciousness  functions  as  an  instrument  for  controlling 
further  behavior,  we  are  in  danger  of  underestimating  the  aspect  that 
used  to  be  considered  of  primary  importance — its  dealings  with  our  past 
experiences.  In  its  extreme  form  the  older  view  held  that  "ideas"  were 
mere  copies  of  events.  The  truth  is  that  neither  aspect  can  be  considered 
intelligibly  without  the  other.  As  valuational,  conscious  experience  faces 
both  ways.  In  every  situation  there  is  use  of  just  so  much  of  past  experi- 
ence as  is  needed  for  the  efficient  control  of  the  matter  in  hand.  At  every 
step  there  is  elimination,  reshaping,  synthesis,  but  always  under  guidance  of 
the  emerging  end.  The  past  is  drawn  upon  for  means;  it  represents  the 
means  available.  But  in  the  interaction  of  means  and  ends,  each  is 
modified.  The  bare  end  as  first  before  the  mind  is  very  different  from 
what  may  be  called  the  efficient  end,  ready  to  discharge  into  overt  action. 
It  has  become  both  enriched  and  defined  through  the  intermediate  survey 
and  selection  of  past  experiences.  It  is  easily  seen  that  the  selective 
character  of  consciousness  is  most  conspicuous  in  those  cases  in  which  a 
new  end  is  to  be  attained. 

Bound  up  with  this  evaluating,  selective,  controlling  character  of  con- 
sciousness is  its  aspect  of  objective  reference,  which  is,  indeed,  only  another 
way  of  stating  its  essential  nature.  Consciousness,  as  I  have  already  said, 
always  points  beyond  itself.  It  is  never  mere  consciousness  in  general,  a  sort 
of  abiding  entity  back  of  particular  experiences,  but  always  a  consciousness 
of  something,  whether  it  be  of  a  tree,  a  movement,  an  emotion,  or  a  mathe- 
matical formula.*     On  one  side  it   indicates  the  individual's  direction  of 

«  Cf.  William  James,  "Does  'Consciousness'  Exist?"  Journal  of  Philosophy, 
Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods,  Vol.  I,  No.  18. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  9 

interest  at  that  particular  time ;  on  the  other,  it  stands  for  something  with 
regard  to  which  he  may  act,  with  which  he  may  do  something.  This 
"object"  to  which  consciousness  refers,  which  forms  its  core,  as  it  were, 
need  not,  of  course,  be  situated  in  the  external  world  of  space.  It  may  be 
thought  of  as  within  the  organism,  or  as  "only  in  the  mind."  But,  what- 
ever the  direction  of  the  reference,  the  object  does  not  merely  happen  to  be 
there;  it  is  there  because  it  is  the  center  of  a  cluster  of  specific  activities.  It 
is,  indeed,  a  construction  of  those  activities,  never  a  mere  external  "given." 
It  marks  a  certain  point  in  their  interrelation  and  reorganization.^ 

In  general,  then,  we  may  say  that  functional  psychology  conceives  of 
human  experience  as  a  continuous  series  of  attempted  or  achieved  modes  of 
control  of  behavior.  Through  all  the  bewildering  richness  and  complexity 
of  actual  living,  with  its  countless  instances  of  doing  and  thinking,  succeed- 
ing and  faiUng,  hating  and  loving,  suffering  and  enjoying,  it  traces  the 
waves  of  an  unceasing  but  intricate  and  varied  rhythm,  one  pulse  of  con- 
sciousness emerging  from  another  and  passing  over  into  a  third,  different 
from  either,  but  affected  by  both.  It  finds  its  problems  in  determining  the 
conditions  and  characteristics  of  these  several  types,  their  relations  to  one 
another,  their  own  internal  make-up.  It  does  not  neglect  the  structural 
aspects  of  mind  that  bulk  so  large  in  the  traditional  psychology — a  charge 
brought  against  it  chiefly  on  the  strength  of  its  name;  but  it  seeks  to  place 
them  within  a  specific  process,  as  limiting  terms  or  stages  of  that  process. 
It  reads  off  the  accepted  psychological  categories — sensation,  perception, 
memory,  imagination,  association,  habit,  attention,  volition,  and  the  like — 
in  terms  of  kinds  and  degrees  of  control.  This  insistence  upon  the  funda- 
mental significance  of  the  cdncept  of  control  does  not  mean,  however,  that 
functional  psychology  considers  only  those  types  of  experience  that  are 
most  obviously  utilitarian  and  "objective"  in  the  popular  sense  of  the 
word.  It  aims  to  account  for  the  operations  of  the  most  abstract  reflective 
thought,  for  the  subtlest  nuances  of  feeling  and  mood,  for  the  pleasures  of 
contemplation  and  day-dreaming  as  well  as  for  more  immediately  practical 
and  strenuous  forms  of  mental  life. 

A  moment's  glance  at  the  course  of  everyday  experience  is  sufficient  to 
show  us  that  this  process  of  gaining  control,  of  maturing  our  plans  for  action, 
is  not  uniform  in  its  operation.  Experience  in  the  loose  popular  sense 
as  well  as  experience  psychologically  considered  has  its  "substantive"  and 
its  "transitive"  phases,  to  use  James's  well-known  and  admirable  descrip- 
tive terms.     It  is  made  up  of  an  "alternation  of  flights  and  perchings." 

I  J.  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  X,  "Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process"  (H. 
W.  Stuart),  pp.  250-53. 


lO  THE   AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE 

That  is  to  say,  there  are  times  when  our  mental  activity  flows  smoothly 
over  into  outward  acts — or,  rather,  when  we  do  not  become  aware  of  any 
separation  between  the  two  sorts  of  activity.  The  mere  suggestion  of  a 
familiar  end,  the  mere  identification  of  a  stimulus,  brings  about  at  once  the 
appropriate  response.  In  recent  psychology  much  has  been  made  of  the 
importance  of  habit,  "the  fly-wheel  of  society."  But  even  yet  we  recognize 
imperfectly  the  extent  to  which  it  governs  whole  reaches  of  our  lives. 
Dressing  and  undressing,  eating  at  certain  times  and  in  certain  ways,  keep- 
ing routine  engagements,  carrying  on  skilled  operations,  associating  with 
family  and  friends,  speaking,  walking,  gesticulating,  and  a  thousand  other 
minor  adjustments,  are  regulated  by  habits  of  every  degree  of  complexity 
and  certainty.  We  do  these  things  as  a  matter  of  course,  without  "stopping 
to  think  about  them,"  as  we  say;  and  our  "consciousness"  of  them  is 
nothing  more  than  a  diffused  feeling  of  satisfactory  performance. 

But  there  are  other  times  when  it  is  not  so  easy  to  carry  on  some  of  our 
pursuits.  A  difficulty,  an  obstacle  of  some  sort,  turns  up,  and  interferes 
with  our  accustomed  ways  of  doing  things.  This  interference  may  issue 
from  ourselves,  from  people  about  us,  from  "things"  in  the  physical  world. 
But  in  every  case  its  effect  is  to  arrest  our  course  of  action  at  the  time,  to 
throw  us  back  temporarily  upon  ourselves,  to  reveal  a  cleft  between  what 
we  think  and  what  we  can  do.  We  have  to  attend  to  the  disturbance,  to 
"think  it  over,"  and  to  adjust  both  ourselves  and  our  surroundings  before 
we  can  proceed  on  our  way — rejoicing  or  not,  as  the  case  may  be.  Such 
interruption,  of  course,  may  range  from  the  slightest  momentary  pause  and 
feeling  of  tension  to  a  cataclysm  that  paralyzes  effort  and  even  destroys 
life.  Between  these  limits  the  checking  of  overt  action  may  be  stated 
in  psychological  terms  as  a  clash  and  conflict  between  habits  or  groups  of 
habits.  Instead  of  functioning  independently  or  reinforcing  one  another, 
they  inhibit;  and  none  is  able  to  reach  its  normal  outlet  in  conduct.  If 
such  collision  be  violent,  our  first  feehng  is  that  of  shock,  bare  "sensation;" 
passing  quickly  into  an  unpleasantly  emotional  condition  of  bewilder- 
ment, confusion,  dismay.  But,  unless  the  situation  is  so  overpowering 
that  we  are  crushed  by  it  or  forced  to  abandon  it  altogether,  this  emotional 
reaction  resolves  itself  into  an  attempted  investigation  of  the  situation,  a 
scrutinizing  and  marshaling  of  its  lacks  and  its  resources,  in  order  to  dis- 
cover how  it  may  be  modified  and  once  more  rendered  available  for  conduct. 
This  focusing  of  attention  upon  the  various  elements  of  the  situation,  this 
"reflecting  upon  it,"  which  is,  indeed,  literally  a  bending  or  turning  back 
upon  it,  brings  to  light  with  increasing  definiteness  both  means  and  end  or 
ends,  until  at  last  they  coalesce  sufficiently  for  the  resumption  of  action.     It 


/n 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  II 

is  essential  to  notice,  moreover,  that  such  an  operation  of  thought  not  only 
heals  a  temporary  breach  in  our  world  of  experience,  but  actually  makes 
over  a  portion  of  that  world,  and  so  affects  the  whole.  The  line  of  action 
that  we  carry  out  after  the  resolution  of  our  difficulty  is  never  exactly  what 
we  should  have  done  had  not  the  break  intervened. 

Such  an  account,  brief  as  it  is,  reveals  the  essentially  reconstructive, 
reorganizing,  instrumental  character  of  reflective  thought.  It  arises  in  a 
disturbed  situation  within  which  control  has  become  for  the  time  impossible ; 
it  transforms  that  situation  so  that  it  may  be  again  controlled — that  is  to  say, 
acted  upon.  In  one  sense,  to  be  sure,  it  is  in  itself  activity  of  the  most 
intense  kind ;  but  it  is  activity  temporarily  detached  from  the  world  of  out- 
ward conduct  and  concerned  with  the  upbuilding  of  a  new  conscious  content 
which  is  to  serve  as  a  plan  of  action.  As  such,  it  may  fairly  be  set  over 
against  the  action  that  follows  upon  the  construction  of  this  content.^ 

We  find,  then,  two  broad  types  of  conscious  experience — immediate  or  7 

constitutive  experience,  and  mediate  or  reflective  experience.     Both  are  '    > 

equally  immediate  in  the  sense  of  occurring  at  a  particular  present  time; 
but  reflective  thought  obviously  bears  a  relation  to  conduct  different  from 
the  relation  sustained  to  it  by  constitutive  thought.  Immediate  experience 
may  be  most  broadly  characterized  as  habitual;  mediate,  as  attentive. 
Neither  tj'pe  exists  at  large  or  apart  from  the  other.  Stated  in  general 
terms,  they  represent  limits  of  one  process,  and  any  particular  experience 
stands  merely  for  a  special  emphasis  on  one  aspect  or  the  other.  But  for 
purposes  of  reflective  analysis  it  is  important  to  distinguish  them.  Reflec- 
tion arises  as  a  method  of  dealing  with  some  hitch  in  practice;  its  results 
survive  and  become  embodied  in  practice,  to  be  again  challenged  and 
revised  by  thought  on  the  appearance  of  a  new  emergency.  Every  psy- 
chological habit  has  thus  been  originated  under  the  pressure  of  attention.* 

To  the  reflective  or  judging  process  we  shall  return  briefly  later.  Here 
we  need  to  examine  immediate  experience  more  fully.  In  all  its  myriacl 
forms  and  gradations  we  recognize  certain  common  characteristics.  In' 
the  first  place,  the  situation  does  not  polarize  itself.  With  the  reaction  fol- 
lowing hard  upon  the  heels  of  the  suggestion  or  stimulus,  we  are  aware  of 
the  act  as  a  whole.  Our  interest,  our  sense  of  activity,  is  diffused  over  the 
entire  situation.  Either  there  is  no  recognition  of  the  end  or  purpose  as 
apart  from  the  actual  accomplishment,  or,  if  it  be  present,  it  serves  merely 
as  a  momentary  cue,  lapsing  from  consciousness  after  it  has  set  in  motion 

I  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  XI,  "Some  Logical  Aspects  of  Purpose" 
(A.  W.  Moore),  pp.  350-52. 

'  Ibid.,  II,  "Thought  and  Its  Subject-Matter"  (Dewey),  pp.  42,43. 


12  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

the  appropriate  habitual  responses.  There  is  no  defining  of  the  end  or 
searching  for  the  means  to  that  end,  and  consequently  no  opposition  of 
means  to  ends.  Neither  do  we  set  the  self  over  against  the  object.  Con- 
sciousness is  not  self-consciousness.  There  is  no  antagonism  between 
the  subjective  self  and  a  recalcitrant  objective  world. 

In  the  second  place,  and  as  a  consequence  of  this  lack  of  division  within 
the  situation,  immediate  experience  is  unaccompanied  by  the  feelings  of 
compulsion  or  of  effort.  In  one  sense,  it  may  be  objected,  it  touches  the 
high-water  mark  of  compulsion.  We  cannot  help  having  the  experience. 
We  do  the  thing  before  we  know  it.  We  are  compelled  to  do  it.  It  is 
imposed  upon  us.  This  is  all  very  true.  But  the  compulsion  resides 
within  the  general  setting  of  the  experience;  it  is  a  product  of  many  past 
experiences.  It  is  not,  to  the  person  involved,  a  conscious  accompaniment 
of  the  immediate  experience,  although  he  may  notice  it  in  later  reflection 
upon  the  event.  As  it  occurs,  its  inevitableness  is  for  him  the  happiest 
spontaneity.  Only  for  the  psychologist  is  it  to  be  read  in  terms  of  compul- 
sion. Just  here  we  see  the  confusion  of  psychological  points  of  view  that 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  free-will  controversy.  It  is  an  instance  of  that  insidious 
foe,  the  psychologist's  fallacy. 

The  feeling  of  effort,  too,  the  straining  to  achieve  an  end,  to  discover 
fitting  means,  or  the  struggle  between  competing  ends,  is  of  necessity 
excluded  from  immediate  experience.  Accepting  the  view  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  effort  as  marking  an  intermediate  and  incomplete  stage  in  the  recon- 
structive process^ — a  view  that  seems  to  me  irrefutable  from  the  functional 
standpoint — I  find  no  place  for  effort  in  the  foregoing  account  of  immediate 
experience.  As  unitary  the  experience  cannot  be  described  in  terms  derived 
from  another  type  of  situation.  Both  compulsion  and  effort  characterize  the 
problematic,  disturbed  situation,  not  the  satisfactory  situation.  This  by 
no  means  implies,  however,  that  a  feeling  of  activity  is  wanting  to  immediate 
experience.  Such  a  feeling  or  successful  functioning  is  not  to  be  confused 
with  effort,  which  is  the  consciousness  of  unsuccessful  or  incomplete 
functioning. 

This  mention  of  the  feeling  of  activity,  which  may  frequently  be 
described  as  interest  and  even  as  pleasantness,  leads  us  to  ask  concerning 
the  conditions  of  its  appearance.  It  lis  not  present,  at  least  to  any  observ- 
able degree,  in  many  cases  of  immediate  experience.  The  indifference  of 
routine  activities  is  notorious;  they  too  often  dip  to  the  pole  of  unpleasant- 
ness; monotony  leads  to  boredom,  ennui.     In  other  cases  they  soon  reach 

» Dewey,  "The  Psychology  of  Effort,"  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  VI. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  I3 

the  automatic  level,  and  we  carry  them  on  while  giving  our  attention  to 
other  things.     In  fact,  under  normal  conditions  we  must  do  so. 

But  in  more  complicated  forms  of  activity,  in  which  integrated  groups 
of  habits  are  employed  and  function  smoothly  and  simultaneously,  we  have 
often  a  highly  pleasurable  sense  of  the  putting-forth  of  energy.  There  is  a 
real  glow  of  satisfaction  in  accomplishing  a  piece  of  work  varied  enough  to 
hold  attention,  and  yet  with  all  its  details  thoroughly  mastered.  It  is  this 
type  of  consciousness  that  we  call  the  feeling  of  activity,  as  distinguished 
from  the  feeling  of  effort  experienced  in  setting  up  a  new  co-ordination.  In 
such  cases  it  is  evident  that  our  experience  is  of  the  immediate  type  only 
because  it  has  become  so  thoroughly  mediated.  It  is  woven  of  the  results 
of  past  reflective  processes,  past  acts  of  attention;  it  is  shot  through  with 
previously  attained  values.  The  sense  of  activity,  therefore,  attaches  to 
habitual  activities  of  a  relatively  complex  type,  drawing  adequately  upon 
the  motor  resources  of  the  organism,  and  not  forcing  those  that  are  unexer- 
cised into  perverted  and  abortive  functioning.  In  other  words,  it  is  a  pro- 
duct of  a  cluster  of  simultaneous  and  tolerably  well  co-ordinated  reactions, 
while  it  is  lacking  in  reactions  that  are  markedly  serial,  each  serving  merely 
as  a  stimulus  and  then  lapsing  from  consciousness.  Such  reactions  are 
indifferent  or  positively  unpleasant. 

Into  the  physiological  aspects  of  these  types  of  immediate  experience  I 
do  not  intend  to  enter,  save  in  the  most  cursory  way.  But  in  the  functional 
conception  of  the  establishment  of  new  co-ordinations  the  physiological 
and  the  psychological  are  most  intimately  conjoined.  Each,  indeed,  is  an 
abstraction  without  the  other;  and  purposive  consciousness  takes  its  place 
in  the  organic  evolutionary  series  as  a  superior  means  developed  through 
natural  selection  for  resolving  tensions,  and  thus  for  setting  up  new  co- 
ordinations.^ From  this  point  of  view  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  an 
entirely  static  or  passive  conscious  experience,  even  when  consciousness  is 
at  its  lowest  ebb ;  and  mind  manifests  itself  at  its  highest  degree  of  activity 
when  it  focuses  upon  tensional  situations  and  acts  as  an  agency  of  recon- 
struction and  control.  Physiology  and  psychology  meet  on  common 
ground  in  the  modern  doctrine  of  impulse,  though  at  the  present  stage  of 
our  knowledge  any  account  is  bound  to  be  chiefly  in  physiological  terms, 
and  to  be  at  best  only  a  coarse  description.  Tendency  to  movement  is  taken 
as  the  fundamental  characteristic  of  living  matter;  and  an  organism  so  high 
in  the  biologic  scale  as  is  the  human  being  is  found  to  possess^  in  addition  to 
established  co-ordinations  mediating  physiological  processes  and  a  limited 
number  of  definite  instincts,  a  large  equipment  of  open  or  loose  impulses 

I  Angell,  Psychology,  p.  7. 


14  THE  AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE 

or  tendencies  to  action,  discharging  indiscriminately  upon  the  presentation 
of  any  stimukis,  and  often  apparently  at  random,  through  the  presence  of 
some  intra-organic  stimulating  condition.  At  this  stage  we  find  adjustment 
and  control  at  their  lowest  terms  and  in  their  most  rudimentary  form.  We 
may  rather  say  that  in  unco-ordinated  impulse  we  have  the  raw  material  for 
co-ordination  and  control.  But  given  these  unstable  and  vague  impulses 
and  a  highly  plastic  nervous  tissue  modified  by  every  discharge  of  activity, 
changes  are  bound  to  occur.  Impulses  come  into  conflict  with  one  another 
through  simultaneous  responses  to  different  or  to  ambiguous  stimuli. 
Their  pathways  of  discharge  intercept,  and  the  impulses  are  mutually 
checked  or  inhibited.  Gathering  momentum  from  this  damming-up,  they 
struggle  to  break  through  a  new  channel  into  which  they  may  both  escape. 
If  they  succeed  in  doing  this,  each  is  modified  in  the  process;  a  new  line  of 
egress  has  been  made;  and  they  eventually  reinforce  instead  of  inhibiting 
one  another.  In  other  words,  a  co-ordination  has  been  set  up ;  the  impulses 
function  together  in  one  system,  instead  of  independently  and  often  antago- 
nistically. Roughly,  this  is  the  history  of  all  sensori-motor  co-ordinations. 
-The  systems  become  more  and  more  intricate,  gathering  to  themselves 
Ivarious  lesser  systems,  but  at  the  same  time  simplifying  and  unifying.  As 
/jthe  organization  becomes  elaborate,  consciousness  becomes  more  and  more 
dominant.  Immediate  experience  is,  on  the  physiological  side,  established 
co-ordination. 

For  the  most  part  modern  psychology  has  ignored  the  transformations 
in  the  other  aspect  of  the  situation — the  stimulus.  But  the  process  on  the 
side  of  the  organism  is  meaningless  taken  apart  from  the  occasion  which 
gives  it  direction.  From  a  bare  opportunity  for  the  discharge  of  an  urgent 
impulse,  a  mere  point  of  irritation,  one  may  almost  say,  the  stimulus  at  last 
becomes  the  object,  a  center  for  any  number  of  responses  and  manipula- 
tions.    How  does  this  come  about  ? 

The  most  satisfactory  attempt  at  explanation  seems  to  me  to  lie  along 
the' lines  of  certain  recent  theories  regarding  the  nature  of  the  psychological 
image,  although  the  problems  involved  have  not  yet  been  worked  out  to 
entire  satisfaction.  Since  the  days  of  Galton's  "breakfast-table"  ques- 
tionary  the  psychology  of  imagery  has  been  greatly  to  the  fore.  The  various 
kinds  of  images — visual,  auditory,  motor,  etc. — have  been  studied  with 
painstaking  detail.  But  the  accounts  given  have  been  almost  wholly 
descriptive,  structural.  The  image  of  whatever  type  has  been  dealt  with 
in  isolation,  as  a  mental  product,  an  event,  to  be  analyzed  and  classified. 
Taken  thus,  it  has  been  thought  of  chiefly  as  a  memory-image,  a  "copy," 
of  past  experience,  though  worn  down  and  altered  in  one  way  and  another. 


THE   PLACE   OF   THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  1 5 

Its  representative  character  has  been  emphasized  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
aspects,  and  it  has  been  pictured  as  floating  around  somehow  in  the  mind, 
and  as  bobbing  up  sometimes  opportunely  and  sometimes  in  most  unlikely 
and  unexpected  places.  Such  a  treatment  of  the  image  gives  no  satisfactory 
answer  to  the  questions  of  its  origin  or  of  its  part  in  the  mental  economy. 
It  makes  its  behavior  fortuitous,  which  is  only  saying  that  it  is  unexplained. 
Functional  psychology,  however,  has  sought  to  place  the  image  within  the 
act,  to  determine  its  part  in  the  securing  of  control  over  a  situation.  It 
holds  that  the  image  normally  emerges  in  response  to  some  exigency  of  the 
present,  some  demand  for  controlling  the  future,  and  functions  as  a  plan  of 
action,  a  map  of  conduct.^  This  plan  has  necessarily  to  pass  through 
various  stages  and  transformations  in  the  course  of  its  construction.  It  is 
revamped,  telescoped  together,  expanded  here,  pruned  there,  until  the  situa- 
tion is  mastered.  Definite  memory  images  arise  as  there  is  need  of  recourse 
to  past  experience,  to  be  thrown  aside  or  worked  into  the  final  result.  It  is 
still  to  be  recognized  by  the  majority  that  memory  is  a  means  of  dealing  with 
present  and  future,  and  by  no  means  belongs  exclusively  to  a  bald  "past." 
The  resultant  image  is  thus  assuredly  not  a  mere  copy  of  past  experience, 
although  it  has  drawn  abundantly  upon  the  past  for  materials.  Just  here 
comes  in  the  whole  field  of  association.  Moreover,  the  equipment  of  the 
image  for  its  work  does  not  depend  upon  any  particular  sensory  make-up. 
It  used  to  be  the  psychological  fashion  to  restrict  the  term  "image"  to  the 
visual  and  auditory  types.  But  we  know  now  that  all  images  are  more  or 
less  motor;  and  that  images  derived  from  the  so-called  "lower-senses,"  or 
chiefly  kinaesthetic,  representing  obscure  stresses  and  strains  within  the 
organism,  may  mediate  and  direct  conduct  no  less  effectually  than  those 
derived  from  sight  and  hearing.  Mental  imagery  is  not  a  mere  succession 
of  kinematograph  or  gramaphone  performances.  The  sensory  character 
of  an  image  is  indifferent.  People  tend,  some  to  one  type,  some  to  another, 
or  vary  as  occasion  requires.  The  image  has  value  as  a  symbol,  as  a  short- 
hand statement  of  certain  reactions,  not  as  a  picture  or  echo. 

We  see,  then,  that  a  shifting  play  of  imagery  accompanies  the  process 
of  reconstructing  a  situation ;  perhaps  it  would  be  more  accxirate  to  say  that 
it  is  the  method  by  which  such  reconstruction  is  accomplished.  The  account 
that  I  have  given,  therefore,  of  the  formation  of  the  image  is  a  repetition  in 
other  terms  of  my  account  of  the  process  of  reflective  thought.  Imagery 
marks  tension,  revision,   reorganization,  delayed  response  to  a  stimulus, 

I  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  VIII,  "Image  and  Idea  in  Logic"  (W.  C. 
Gore),  pp.  193-99;  W.  C.  Gore,  "Image  or  Sensation,"  Jour.  Philos.,  Psych,  and  Sci. 
Meth.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  434-41;  Vol.  II,  pp.  97-100. 


i6  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

because  that  stimulus  is  for  some  reason  ambiguous  or  ill-defined,  and  needs 
to  be  built  up  into  an  object  that  we  can  handle  with  certitude  and  conse- 
quent efficiency.  The  final  image,  therefore,  coalesces  with  the  object,  is 
the  object  from  the  mental  side. 

Professor  George  H.  Mead,  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  has  put  forth 
in  some  unpublished  lectures  a  suggestive  theory  in  terms  of  impulse  and 
reaction  of  the  growth  of  the  bare  stimulus  into  the  object  and,  on  the  other 
side,  of  the  growth  of  the  bare  sensation  into  the  image  or  idea.  Taking 
the  ground  that  the  primary  datum  is  the  impulse,  the  tendency  to  response, 
rather  than  the  stimulus  or  object  as  in  any  sense  ready-made  or  "given," 
Professor  Mead  holds  that  the  definite  object  arises  through  a  translation 
of  immediate  contact  reactions — such  as  are  found  in  lower  organisms — 
into  distance  reactions.  That  is  to  say,  we  recognize  a  distant  object,  and 
can  control  and  direct  our  behavior  toward  it  only  because  it  stands  for  a 
number  of  suppressed  contact  reactions.  Any  object — a  tree  or  a  chair, 
for  instance — ^is  a  cluster  of  all  the  possible  modes  of  touching  and  manipu- 
lating it  that  we  do  not  carry  out.  It  has  external  existence,  bulk,  and 
solidity  for  us  only  as  all  these  incipient  activities  are  aroused  and  at  the 
same  time  inhibited  from  discharge  into  gross  external  movements.  Every 
image  or  developed  object  of  consciousness  presupposes  a  series  of  direct 
contacts  and  a  working-over  of  these  into  distance  equivalents.^  The 
special  sense-organs,  notably  the  eye,  are  organs  of  such  translation.  The 
lowest  unicellular  organisms  expand  and  contract  as  a  whole  only  upon 
contact  with  extraneous  material;  later  we  find  pseudopodia,  cilia,  tentacles, 
etc. — all  contact  mechanisms.  With  the  evolution  of  higher  forms  appear 
the  distance  senses  of  smell,  sight,  and  hearing,  and  the  human  hand  is 
admittedly  an  unsurpassed  instrument  of  exploration  and  delicate  contact 
discriminations.  The  image  or  object,  therefore,  as  built  up  in  human 
experience,  represents  an  intricate  system  of  translations,  substitutions, 
inhibitions.  It  means  on  the  physiological  side  a  complicated  sensori- 
motor co-ordination,  the  welding  into  a  single  activity  of  various  minor 
reactions  once  carried  on  vaguely  and  independently.  Such  a  view  jibes 
with  the  modern  dictum  that  "all  consciousness  is  motor,"  and  with  the 
more  recent  and  more  specific  doctrine  that  consciousness  appears  and 
continues  sharpest  at  points  of  greatest  tension.*  Put  in  this  way,  the 
physiological  and  the  psychological  statements  of  the  matter  cannot  be  kept 
rigidly  distinct.  The  attempt  to  do  so,  indeed,  at  the  present  stage  of  our 
I  Cf.  M.  F.  Washburn,  "A  Factor  in  Mental  Development,"  Philosophical 
Review,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  622-26. 

a  Angell,  Psychology,  pp.  7,  50-58. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  1 7 

knowledge  of  the  mechanism  of  instinct  and  impulse,  is  hkely  to  result  in 
artificial  abstraction.  At  best  our  accounts  of  the  details  of  neuro-muscular 
process  are  doomed  to  be  only  crudely  figurative. 

In  accordance  with  this  general  conception  of  the  function  of  the  image 
within  the  total  co-ordination  or  act,  various  aspects  of  its  operation  have 
been  recognized  and  differentiated.  Imagery  of  the  fullest  and  most  vivid 
type  obviously  belongs  to  the  reorganizing  and  reconstructive  moments  of 
experience.  But  at  the  first  demand  for  reconstruction,  the  first  awareness 
of  hindrance,  the  stimulus  is  reacted  to  immediately  rather  than  interpreted, 
and  we  have  an  experience  that  corresponds  roughly  to  the  direct  contact 
reaction  of  lower  forms.  Consciousness  is  of  the  nature  of  shock,  "pure 
sensation,"  so  far  as  that  may  exist  in  higher  organisms,  except  as  a  mere 
artefact  of  the  psychologist.  It  is  rawly  affectional  and  sensational;  there 
is  not  yet  sufficient  organization  for  the  appearance  of  the  image.  But 
with  the  dawning  of  a  plan  of  action,  with  the  search  for  appropriate  means, 
the  raw  sensational  material  is  transmuted  into  imagery,  shifting  with 
opalescent  rapidity.  Here  enters  in  the  possibility  of  different  types, 
depending  on  the  character  of  the  specific  situation  to  be  controlled.  At 
times  the  end  in  view  is  relatively  clear;; the  problem  is  the  practical  one  of 
discovering  ways  and  means.  This  leads  to  a  canvassing  of  one's  past 
experience;  the  dominant  images  are  of  the  memor}'  type.  It  is  clear  that 
the  more  easily  the  things  symbolized  by  these  images  may  be  obtained, 
the  less  necessity  exists  for  a  rich  elaboration  of  the  attendant  imagery. 
Only  so  much  develops  as  is  needed  to  serve  as  a  cue  to  conduct.  In  the 
same  way  the  image  of  the  end,  at  first  distinct,  lapses  to  a  mere  push-button 
of  control,  touching  off  and  guiding  the  search  for  materials.  Under  other 
circumstances,  however,  the  end  may  be  the  object  sought  for,  and  may  be 
at  first  extremely  shadowy,  gaining  body  and  precision  only  through  selec- 
tion from  an  abundant  drift  of  imagery,  little  of  it  of  the  definitely  localized 
memory  type.  In  any  case  the  resulting  image  ripe  for  conduct  is  different 
from  the  first  tentative  image  of  the  end.  It  has  developed  through  constant 
interaction  with  the  attendant  images,  each  modifying  and  reshaping  the 
other.  Moreover,  the  content  of  this  resulting  or  "working"  image  may 
differ  widely  in  different  cases.  One  type  of  problem  may  be  solved  serially, 
each  stage  in  its  accomplishment  being  attained  and  dropped  behind  with- 
out contributing  materially  to  the  total  consciousness  of  the  end.  This  type 
of  solution  is  exemplified  in  the  taking  of  a  journey,  the  performance  of  a 
household  duty,  or  of  any  long  ])ut  routine  mechanical  task.  Everyone 
must  have  within  his  experience  the  remembrance  of  hours  and  miles 
checked  off  on  a  time-table,  of  meals  eaten  and  nights  passed  on  a  sleeping- 


« 

l8  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

car.  As  each  of  these  steps  in  the  journey  is  made,  it  is  canceled  from  the 
image  of  the  whole,  it  drops  out  and  is  forgotten  as  is  the  paper  or  the 
orange  skin  one  tosses  from  the  car  window.  The  original  image  of  the 
journey  was  a  definite  core  of  arrival  surrounded  by  a  penumbra  made  up 
of  vague  images  of  the  drag  of  time,  of  heat,  motion,  and  weariness. 
The  actual  happenings  strip  these  off  one  by  one,  and  they  contribute 
nothing  beyond  a  faint  coloring  of  relief  to  the  final  image  and  the 
experience  following  upon  it. 

But  take  the  building  and  furnishing  of  a  house,  the  swinging  of  a  big 
industrial  or  military  maneuvre — the  making  of  a  dress  even — to  choose 
for  the  present  only  instances  that  are  not  commonly  recognized  as  aesthetic. 
Here,  too,  of  course,  there  is  much  eUminated,  dropped  out  of  the  final  con- 
sciousness, the  "working  image."  But  far  more  fully  than  in  the  cases  just 
cited,  the  working  image  has  taken  up  and  absorbed  into  itself  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  various  stages  of  the  process.  They  have  reinforced,  enriched 
one  another  and  the  whole.  They  are  all  there,  contributing  unobtrusively 
but  pervasively  to  the  general  effect.  Their  order  is  not  serial,  but  simul- 
taneous, co-ordinating,  and  reinforcing.  The  perfected  image  differs  from 
the  ''sketch-image,"  as  it  may  be  called  in  the  way  that  the  completed 
house,  subtly  satisfying  in  every  detail  of  line  and  color,  differs  from  the 
architect's  plans  and  the  decorator's  patterns  and  designs.  This  type  of 
image  we  may  call  anticipatorily  the  "aesthetic  image"  (the  term  I  take 
from  Professor  Mead,  though  I  do  not  know  how  fully  he  would  agree 
with  my  interpretation  of  it).  We  shall  return  to  it  latel",  and  inquire  its 
significance  for  our  discussion. 

As  I  said  a  few  paragraphs  back,  the  more  readily  an  image  subserves 
its  purpose  of  recalling  an  object  or  of  touching  off  conduct,  the  less  content 
it  is  obliged  to  have  and  the  fewer  subsidiary  images  it  calls  up.  In  ordinary 
immediate  experience  of  the  routine  habitual  type,  the  image  is  commonly 
shorn  to  a  mere  cue  or  signal,  and  loses  most  of  its  fulness  and  sensory 
character.  It  becomes  a  "working  image"  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms, 
and  verges  again  upon  the  immediate  stimulus. 

We  may  therefore  say  of  the  image  from  the  functional  point  of  view, 
that  it  appears  as  a  mechanism  of  reconstruction  within  a  disturbed  situation 
and  represents  a  cluster  of  mediating  and  mediated  activities.  Imagery 
emerges  after  the  first  shock  of  sensation;  and  in  the  course  of  revising  the 
situation  assumes  broadly  one  of  two  types — the  serial  or  the  simultaneous 
or  co-ordinating.  The  resulting  image  functioning  as  a  stimulus  to  overt 
action  may  be  of  the  practical  or  working  type,  the  result  of  the  serial  form 
of  construction,  or  of  the  aesthetic  type,  the  result  of  the  simultaneous  form. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  19 

With  repeated  or  habitual  use,  this  resultant  image  tends  to  wear  down  more 
and  more  again  to  a  bare  stimulus, 
j         In  this  provisional  survey  of  the  stand  taken  by  functional  psychology  I 
I   have  tried  to  bring  out  its  emphasis  upon  the  constructive  character  of  experi- 
1  ence  as  a  process  of  winning  control  over  specific  situations  and  of  conscious- 
;  ness  as  the  instrument  of  such  reorganization;   I  have  distinguished    two 
main  types  or  phases  of  experience — the  immediate  or  habitual,  and  the 
mediate  or  reflective;  and  I  have  indicated  the  part  played  by  imagery  in 
such  a  psychological  conception.     I  shall  now  give  a  general  and  untech- 
nical  survey  of  the  aesthetic  experience  as  it  manifests  itself  to  the  average 
;  person,  and  as  it  has  been  explained  and  analyzed  by  certain  philosophers 
and  psychologists. 

III.      THE  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

The  most  psychologically  unsophisticated  person,  if  he  have  any  aesthetic 
interests,  will  not  hesitate,  I  think,  to  range  his  moments  of  unmistakable 
aesthetic  enjoyment — whether  of  creation  or  of  appreciation — on  the  side 
of  immediate  rather  than  of  reflective  experience.  In  such  moments  at 
their  purest  we  all  have  a  sense  of  exemption  and  release  from  the  pressure 
and  the  precariousness  of  life.  We  cease  temporarily  to  "look  before  and 
after,  and  pine  for  what  is  not."  We  are  lapped  about  by  the  present 
experience,  steeped  in  it,  although  we  do  not  think  of  it  as  present  in  the 
sense  of  contrasting  it  with  a  harassing  or  insistent  past  or  future.  It  is 
simply  experience,  full,  exhaustive,  brimming  over  with  satisfaction.  But 
this  does  not  mean  that  it  is  a  passive  experience,  or  a  mere  state  of  trance 
or  ecstasy,  although  rarely  it  may  approach  these  limits  when  we  are  "rapt" 
in  aesthetic  contemplation.  Such  a  characterization  of  the  aesthetic  attitude 
is  drawn  too  exclusively  from  our  appreciations  of  painting  and  sculpture; 
it  is  only  seemingly  true  even  there,  as  we  shall  see  later.  On  the  contrary, 
aesthetic  absorption  in  a  drama,  a  symphony — even  in  so  slight  a  thing, 
in  one  sense,  as  a  sonnet — may  give  us  a  feeling  of  intense  activity.  We 
are  swept  along  on  waves  of  alternate  suspense  and  relief  to  a  culminating 
moment  in  which  every  fiber  seems  to  vibrate.  Such  a  state  of  high  stimu- 
lation sometimes  borders  upon  the  painful,  but  it  is  kept  from  becoming 
excessive  or  exhausting  through  the  rhythmical  character  of  its  tensions 
and  relations,  the  "pattern"  that  it  assumes.  We  do  not  feel  overstrained; 
we  are  conscious  simply  of  activity  unimpeded  and  yet  regulated,  of  an 
enlargement  and  quickening  of  our  whole  natures,  a  heightening  of  vitality. 
We  breathe  deeper;  out  hearts  beat  faster;  oiur  cheeks  glow.  It  seems  as 
if  we  were  doing  easily  and  spontaneously  things  that  we  have  hitherto 


^     OF  THE 

UNiVERsnx 


20  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

been  able  to  accomplish  only  with  pain  and  effort.  This  sense  of  facilita- 
tion, ease,  and  spontaneity  is  manifest  to  some  degree  in  every  aesthetic 
experience.  Although  we  are  usually  quiescent  so  far  as  outward  move- 
ments are  concerned,  we  experience  in  a  sort  of  glorified  form  the  exhilara- 
tion that  comes  ordinarily  with  certain  kinds  of  successful  active  exercise. 
We  have  a  sense  of  rich  and  harmonious  employment  of  many  bodily  organs, 
functioning  as  it  were  vicariously.  We  feel  that  there  exists  a  peculiar 
intimacy  between  us  and  the  aesthetic  object.  We  enter  into  it  and  possess 
it ;  it  enters  into  and  possesses  us.  More  truly,  perhaps,  we  and  the  object 
are  fused,  blended  in  a  single  pulse  of  experience.  Such  a  state  of  mind  is 
obviously  strongly  emotional;  it  is  suffused  with  an  affective  coloring. 
These  characteristics,  however,  are  implicit  and  latent  in  the  consciousness 
of  the  subject  of  the  aesthetic  thrill.  They  can  be  marshaled  and  described 
only  by  the  sympathetic  observer,  or,  by  the  participator  after  the  experi- 
ence has  passed;  and  the  experience  is  fleeting  and  notoriously  difficult  to 
confine  in  words.  It  has  been  the  theme  of  poets,  the  subject  of  an  array 
of  eloquent  descriptions.     But  it  still  eludes. 

Moreover,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  phrase  a  general  account  that 
will  fit  even  coarsely  the  several  types  of  aesthetic  experience.  Music, 
poetry,  the  plastic  and  graphic  arts,  are  independent  and  to  a  large  extent 
unique.  I  have  set  forth  the  common  characteristics  of  the  more  elaborate 
and  conspicuous  instances  of  the  experience.  But  these  characteristics 
may  be  traced  even  in  the  simplest  observable  forms.  And  they  are  to  be 
found  in  the  experience  of  both  the  artist,  the  producer,  and  the  spectator, 
the  appreciator.  In  the  first  they  lead  to  and  accompany  the  technique  of 
actual  production;  in  the  second,  to  enlargement  of  view  and  to  renewed 
vigor  in  ordinary  occupations.  The  difference  seems  to  me  one  of  degree, 
not  one  of  kind;  and  I  cannot  sympathize  with  the  position  taken  by 
such  men  as  Groos*  and  Marshall"  that  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  rigid  dis- 
tinction between  the  two  attitudes.  It  is  undoubtedly  necessary  to  recog- 
nize the  two  forms,  but  each  man  has  in  his  degree  the  sense  of  expansion, 
enhancement,  and  "wholeness"  of  life  that  is  the  essence  of  the  aesthetic 
experience,  and  that  has  made  it  the  despair  of  the  scientist  and  the 
inspiration  of  the  poet. 

Turning  to  philosophy  and  psychology,  we  find  that  their  accounts  of  the 
aesthetic  experience  do  not  go  much  beyond  a  systematized  statement  of 
certain  aspects  patent  to  the  untrained  observer.     Under  some  differences 

/        I  Der  aesthetische  Genuss,  pp.  i,  2. 

a  "Relation  of  Aesthetics  to  Psychology  and  Philosophy,"  Philosophical  Review, 
Vol.  XIV,  pp.  2,  3. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  21 

in  terminology,  moreover,  there  is  striking  unanimity  in  the  descriptions 
given  by  widely  differing  schools.  Over  aesthetics,  idealists  and  empiri- 
cists appear  to  join  hands,  although  probably  quite  inadvertently.  The 
emphasis  upon  specific  aspects,  however,  differs  with  almost  every  writer. 
In  general,  the  accounts  given  assign  the  aesthetic  experience  to  what  I 
have  called  immediate  experience,  although  the  term  in  this  sense  is  of 
recent  application,  and  although  Fechner  was  the  first,  I  believe,  to  include 
"immediacy"  among  aesthetic  criteria.^  All  alike  make  much  of  its  rela- 
tive isolation,  its  detachment  from  the  practical  business  of  life,  and  its 
disinterestedness  or  lack  of  specific  conscious  end.     Insistence  upon  this 

I  negative  aspect  has  led  to  the  setting-up  of  the  non-utilitarian  character  of 

'  the  aesthetic  experience  as  its  principal  criterion,  and  to  its  affiliation  with 
play  as  a  kind  of  excess  discharge,  due  merely  to  the  presence  of  a  super- 
abundance of  vital  energy.  Of  late  a  more  scientific  and  evolutionary  view 
of  play  has  greatly  modified  this  theory  both  for  play  and  for  aesthetics. 
On  the  positive  side  writers  on  aesthetics  have  accounted  for  the  independ- 
ence, the  "  inclosedness,"  of  the  experience  on  the  score  of  its  fulness  of 
content,  its  high  conscious  value;  it  floods  and  captures  consciousness. 
Here  again  they  have  compared  it  to  play  with  respect  to  its  freedom,  spon- 
taneity, and  ease."  Aesthetic  pleasure  has,  indeed,  been  said  to  be  passive 
as  opposed  to  the  pleasures  of  play,  which  are  active. 3  But  recent  psychol- 
ogy points  out  that  no  type  of  conscious  experience  is  truly  passive.  The 
distinction  is  at  most  a  distinction  between  gross  outward  movements  and 
delicate  organic  reactions,  and  accordingly  furnishes  no  real  criterion. 
The  tendency  at  present,  on  the  contrary,  is  to  bring  into  prominence  the 

/  activity  side  of  the  aesthetic  experience.  Its  extraordinary  life-enhancing 
qualities  are  dwelt  upon,  its  power  of  arousing  a  feeling  of  full  but  harmo- 
nious interplay  of  both  organic  and  mental  processes. 

A  long-accepted   and  favorite  category  of  aesthetic  theory  is  that  of 
objectivily.     It  is  not  easy  always  to  determine  just  what  is  meant  by  the 

/  term  as  used  in  aesthetics.  Undoubtedly  usage  differs,  and  it  means  differ- 
ent things  to  different  writers.  Here  it  is  enough  to  say  that'  in  general  it 
appears  to  be  used  to  indicate  the  fact  that  the  aesthetic  object  and  the 
feeling  aroused  by  it  are  not  held  apart  in  the  mind  of  the  person  having  the 
aesthetic  experience.  The  self  is  in  a  sense  identified  with  the  object ;  the 
"feeling-tone"  of  the  observer  is  "spread  upon"  the  object.     We  say  that 

»  Vorschtde  der  Aesthetik,  Vol.  I,  p.  15. 
»  George  Santayana,  The  Sense  0}  Beauty,  pp.  25-30. 
--  '    3  Grant  Allen,  Physiological  Aesthetics,  p.  34. 


22  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

the  object  itself  is  beautiful^  not  that  we  have  a  feeling  of  beauty,  of  aesthetic 
satisfaction  with  regard  to  the  object.  The  objectivity  of  the  aesthetic  is 
contrasted  with  the  subjectivity  of  the  merely  pleasant.  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  Santayana  makes  objectivity  the  distinguishing  aesthetic  criterion.  He 
defines  beauty  as  "pleasure  regarded  as  the  quaUty  of  a  thing. "^  But  in 
varying  degrees  such  objectivity  is  characteristic  of  all  forms  of  immediate 
experience.  More  truly,  we  do  not  explicitly  refer  our  experience  either  to 
the  subjective  or  to  the  objective  worlds.  Both  "subjective"  and  "objec- 
tive" are  terms  borrowed  from  mediate  or  reconstructive  experience,  and 
are  therefore  misleading  in  a  discussion  of  the  aesthetic. 

Closely  allied  with  this  category  of  objectivity  are  Bain's  category  of 
"shareableness"3  and  Kant's  famous  category  of  "universality. "4  Both 
imply  that  the  peculiar  aesthetic  tone  or  quality  is  thought  of  as  transferred 
to  the  object,  inhering  in  it,  and  therefore,  as  a  corollary,  common  to  all. 
As  Professor  Tufts  points  out,  "universality"  did  not  mean  for  Kant  that 
there  must  be  a  uniform  judgment  with  regard  to  the  aesthetic  character  of 
an  object,  but  only  that  aesthetic  value  is  thought  of  as  objectified. s  This 
shareableness  or  universality  of  the  aesthetic  is  sometimes  stated  negatively 
as  disinterestedness  or  an  absence  of  desire  for  appropriation  on  the  part  of 
the  observer.  But  a  sounder  statement  would  be  that  in  the  aesthetic 
experience  the  rapport  between  the  object  and  the  "subject"  is  so  close 
that  he  already  feels  himself  in  possession  of  it,  if  the  question  of  possession 
can  be  said  to  enter  in  any  degree  into  the  experience. 

Of  recent  years  aesthetic  theory,  in  reaction  from  the  predominantly 
intellectualistic  attitude  of  the  older  aesthetics,  has  laid  great  stress  upon  the 
strongly  affective  and  emotional  aspects  of  the  aesthetic  experience,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  painful,  the  fleetingly  pleasurable,  or  the  affectively 
.indifferent  quality  of  other  varieties  of  immediate  experience.  Henry 
Rutgers  Marshall  defines  the  aesthetic  as  "the  permanently  pleasurable  in 
revival."  This  heightened  and  widely  diffused  feeling-tone  is  also  made  to 
account  for  the  social  significance  of  the  aesthetic,  the  transmission  of  the 
experience  to  others  through  sympathy,  suggestion,  contagion,  and  the  like. 
At  this  point  it  is  enough  to  mention  these  developments  of  aesthetic  theory. 
We  shall  later  recur  to  them. 

1  Bertihard  Berenson,  Florentine  Painters  of  the  Renaissance,  pp.  7-13,  50-54, 
70-73- 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  49. 

3  The  Emotions  and  the  Will,  chap,  xiv,  "The  Aesthetic  Emotions,"  pp.  225,  226. 

4  Critique  of  Judgment  (translated  by  Bernard),  pp.  55-63. 

5  "  On  the  Genesis  of  the  Aesthetic  Categories,"  University  of  Chicago  Decennial 
Publications,  First  Series,  Vol.  Ill,  Part  II. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  23 

'  To  sum  up,  we  find  that  the  naive  person  and  the  theorist  are  tolerably 
well  agreed  in  a  purely  descriptive  account  of  the  aesthetic  experience. 
Among  the  marks  of  this  experience  are  said  to  be  its  immediacy,  its  detach- 
ment from  ulterior  ends — that  is  to  say,  its  non -utilitarian  character;  its 
vitalizing  power,  its  spontaneity,  its  objectivity,  sharableness,  or  universality 
—  different  terms  for  practically  the  same  thing  —  its  strong  affective 
coloring. 

Such  an  account  makes  no  pretense  at  a  real  explanation  and  grounding 
of  the  categories  employed.  Explanations  have  been  given,  of  course,  from 
both  the  philosophical  and  the  psychological  sides.  But  this  is  not  the 
place  in  which  to  consider  them.  I  am  merely  getting  before  our  minds  in 
the  roughest  way  some  of  the  best-known  descriptions  of  the  aesthetic,  and 
attempting  to  recall  the  tang  of  our  own  individual  aesthetic  experiences. 

But  even  mere  description  reveals/^  some  of  the  paradoxes  already 
referred  to.  If  consciousness  be  anticipatory,  purposive,  an  instrument  for 
seciu-ing  control  over  conduct  in  specific  situations,  how  does  it  come  about 
that  an  experience  said  to  be  devoid  of  utilitarian  or  practical  significance 
should  possess  a  peculiarly  high  degree  of  conscious  value,  should  at  times 
entirely  capture  consciousness  ?  If  such  a  pleasurably  excited  condition  of 
consciousness  be  the  concomitant  of  a  large  number  of  activities  co-operat- 
ing with  and  reinforcing  one  another,  how  does  it  come  that  the  aesthetic 
experience  is  not  the  outcome  of  a  previous  state  of  agitation  and  disturb- 
ance, but  appears  to  arise  without  effort  on  our  part  ?  How  should  it  pro- 
duce in  us  at  once  a  sense  of  exhilaration,  enlargement  of  capacity,  and  at 
the  same  time  a  sense  of  serenity,  of  disentanglement  from  the  business  of 
life,  of  escape  from  the  "  Red  Mist  of  Doing"  ?  These  and  similar  questions 
crowd  our  minds,  and  demand  resolution  of  their  contradictions. 

From  the  experience  of  functional  psychology  in  dealing  with  other 
problems  we  may  reasonably  conclude  that  some  at  least  of  the  enigmas  of 
aesthetics  are  due  to  the  treating  of  the  aesthetic  experience  too  much  in 
*  /  isolation,  to  a  generalization  of  its  dominant  aspects,  and  a  severing  of  them 
from  their  points  of  origin  and  issue  in  concrete  living — that  is,  from  the 
situation  in  which  they  arise.  This  failure  to  mark  the  initial  and  terminal 
points  of  attachment  is  particularly  likely  to  occur  in  the  case  of  the  aesthetic, 
which  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  peculiarly  self -inclosed  experience,  seeming  to 
arise  without  precedent  effort  or  volition  on  our  part,  and  to  point  to  no 
recognized  end.  It  is  no  wonder  that  it  was  long  thought  to  be  the  work 
of  a  special  inborn  sense  of  faculty  of  beauty,  or  even  a  direct  manifestation 
of  deity  itself.  Today  we  are  long  past  the  stage  of  thinking  that  finds 
^1  it  necessary  to  set  up  special  "faculties"  to  account  for  mental  phenomena; 


V 


24  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

but  even  we  may  be  pardoned  for  finding  the  aesthetic  at  first  sight  a  some- 
what obdurate  exception  in  a  purposive  and  evolutionary  world. 

Our  main  problem  is  to  find  a  place  for  the  aesthetic  in  the  experiential 
series  as  read  by  functional  psychology, )  But  before  so  doing  we  shall  find 
it  advantageous  to  run  over  some  of  the  work  that  has  already  been  done 
in  the  aesthetic  field. 

IV.   PREVIOUS  WORK  IN  AESTHETICS 

In  spite  of  substantial  descriptive  agreement,  at  the  outset  one  is 
bewildered  and  baflBed  by  the  chaotic  condition  of  the  literature  of  the 
subject.  Imposing  in  bulk,  it  is  yet  written  from  such  differing  and  often 
contradictory  points  of  view  that  it  lends  color  to  the  contention  that 
aesthetics  has  no  right  to  consider  itself  a  tnie  philosophical  or  normative 
discipline.* 

The  reasons  for  this  incoherence  are  not  far  to  seek.  I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  intrinsic  difl&culties  of  the  aesthetic  problem.  Besides  this, 
the  province  of  aesthetics  lies  upon  the  marches  of  philosophy;  and  is  fre- 
^  !  quentjy  invaded — and  plausibly  claimed — by  adventurers  from  other 
'  domains.  The  artist  and  the  art-critic,  in  whatever  medium  they  work,  are 
prone  to  make  inquiries  into  the  psychology  of  their  art  and  even  into  its 
philosophical  implications.'  The  scientist  is  occasionally  drawn  into  the 
study  of  the  growth  of  some  type  of  art  product  and  its  psychological  bases. 
And  of  late  the  anthropologist  and  the  sociologist  wax  busy  over  the  aesthetic 
consciousness  as  a  social  phenomenon.  All  these  inquirers  handle  the 
subject  according  to  the  bias  of  their  dominant  interests,  sometimes  with  a 
cheerful  disregard  of  psychology,  more  often  with  a  blythe  confidence  in 
outworn  and  discredited  psychological  doctrines.  Even  where  this  is  so, 
however,  they  compensate  for  their  naivete  by  the  freshness  of  their  point  of 
attack  and  the  richness  of  the  new  concrete  material  which  they  bring 
within  the  scope  of  aesthetic  investigation. 

The  more  professional  and  academic  investigators,  too,  have  approached 
the  subject  from  every  point  of  the  compass.  In  the  heyday  of  German 
idealism,  the  new  discipline,  not  long  christened,  was  enlisted  in  the  service 
of  metaphysics,  and  rounded  out  the  systems  of  Kant,  Schelling,  and 
Hegel.  With  the  growth  of  modern  science  and  the  persistence,  in  Eng- 
Jfv«  lish  thought^  least,  of  the  sturdy  empiricism  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
German  idealism  fell  somewhat  into  disrepute,  and  German  aesthetic 
theory  in  particular  became  discredited  because  of  its  vague  and  some- 

"i  \       I  Santayana,  "What  Is  Aesthetics  ?"  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  320-27. 
»  Cf.  B.  Berenson,  Vernon  Lee,  etc. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  25 

what  sentimental  metaphysical  afl&liations.  The  English  mind,  moreover, 
has  never  taken  kindly  to  aesthetic  questions,  and  the  Utilitarians  and 
the  Assoc iationists  generally  were  engrossed  by  legal,  economic,  and  ethical 
questions.  Divorced  from  metaphysics,  aesthetics  languished  for  a  while, 
and  when  it  revived,  it  had  passed  over  for  the  most  part  into  the  camp  of 
empirical  psychology  and  evolutionary  biology.  There  it  has  tarried,  fol- 
lowing the  fortunes  of  current  psychological  and  biological  thinking. 
Herbert  Spencer,  both  in  his  Synthelic  Philosophy  and  more  especially  in 
his  scattered  essays  on  aesthetic  topics;^  Grant  Allen,  in  his  Physiological 
Aesthetics;'  and  Bain^  and  Sully,'*  in  their  clear-cut  treatments  of  the 
subject,  stand  for  the  best  that  has  been  done  by  the  English  Associationist 
school,  and  laid  the  foundations  for  a  science  of  aesthetics.  In  Germany, 
Zeising,s  Fechner,*^  and  Lotze'  led  this  scientific  movement.  With  the 
development  of  experimental  psychology  has  come  the  investigation*  of  cer- 
tain simple  and  specific  aesthetic  problems,  such  as  those  of  space-form, 
rhythm,  and  simple  judgments  of  preference.  The  pioneer  work  of  this 
kind  was  done  by  Fechner  in  his  determination  of  the  "golden  section"  as 
the  most  pleasing  division  of  a  line.  A  long  series  of  similar  researches  has 
since  been  carried  on  with  increasing  mastery  of  technique,  but  without 
greatly  widening  the  area  of  the  problems  studied  or  reaching  important 
new  conclusions.  Recent  attention  to  genetic  psychology  and  interest  in 
the  evolution  of  mind  in  the  race  as  well  as  in  the  individual  have  given  a 
new  importance  and  a  strong  sociological  and  anthropological  coloring  to 
aesthetic  investigations  and  formulations.  Study  of  peoples  low  in  the 
social  scale  reveals  traces  of  the  aesthetic  experience,  and  such  data  have 
been  used  to  throw  light  on  the  more  highly  developed  forms  of  aesthetic 
consciousness  and  to  indicate  its  function  in  the  life  of  the  individual  and  of 
society.  Such  books  as  Grosse's  Beginnings  of  Art  (1893),  Groos's  Play 
of  Animals  (1896)  and  Play  of  Man  (1898),  Bucher's  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus 
(1896;  second,  revised  edition,  1902),  Hirn's  Origins  of  Art  (1900),  and 
Gummere's  Beginnings  of  Poetry  (1901)  have  essayed  to  place  the  aesthetic 
with  reference  to  the  whole  stream  of  man's  social,  occupational,  intellectual 
development ;  and  have  brought  to  bear  upon  the  subject  a  mass  of  biologic, 

«  Principles  of  Psychology  (1872);  Essays  (1852). 

»  1877. 

3  Op.  cii.  (1859) ;  Mental  and  Moral  Science,  chap,  xiii  (1868). 

4  Especially,  Sensation  and  Intuition  (1874). 
s  Aesthetische  Forschungen  (1855). 

6  Vorschule  der  Aesthetik  (1876). 

7  GrundzUge  der  Aesthetik  (1884);  Microcosmos  (1856-64). 


,26  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

psychologic,  and  anthropologic  material,  highly  suggestive,  if  still  some- 
what unorganized.  Outgrowths  of  these  various  movements  of  modem 
thought  are  to  be  found  in  certain  prevalent  aesthetic  theories:  Spencer's 
"play  theory,"  given  a  striking  new  biological  adaptation  and  reinforcement 
by  Groos;  the  "inner  imitation,"  Einjiihlung  theories — all  broadly  alike — 
of  Groos,  Theodore  Lipps,  and  Vernon  Lee;  Lange's  "conscious  self- 
illusion"  theory;   and  Baldwin's  "self-exhibition"  theory. 

Such  a  survey  makes  evident  that  for  the  last  fifty  years  the  dominant 
tendency  has  been  to  treat  aesthetics  as  a  branch  of  psychology  rather  than 

'  of  philosophy,/ to  consider  detached  empirical  phenomena,  but  to  steer 
clear  of  the  attempt  to  give  them  a  philosophical  grounding.  Of  late,  how- 
ever, there  is  a  decided  movement  in  the  direction  of  referring  the  aesthetic 
to  a  place  in  the  course  of  concrete  race-experience,  thus  giving  it  a 
definitely  social  character.  This  movement,  though  as  yet  only  tentative, 
suggests  the  possibility  of  giving  some  sort  of  coherence  under  the  guidance 
of  an  explicit  method  to  a  mass  of  rich  but  scattered  material.     Systema- 

[   tization  of  this  sort  runs  the  danger,  it  is  true,  of  substituting  a  cheap  and 

\  easy  agreement  for  honest  irreconcilabilities;  but  to  apply  such  a  method  to 
such  material  must  result  in  some  testing  and  winnowing  of  both.  More- 
over, the  conclusions  of  functional  psychology  lead  with  coercive  logic  to  a 

,|  definite  philosophic  position — call  it  "dynamic  idealism,"  "pragmatism," 
'  j  "humanism,"  what  you  will;  it  is  not  yet  ripe  for  a  definitive  name — and 
[so  suggests  a  philosophic  basis  for  the  aesthetic. 

V.      PRELIMINARY  DEFINITIONS 

\ 

■  Hitherto  I  have  not  ventured  upon  definitions.  A  satisfactory  definition, 
indeed,  is  one  of  the  most  difiicult  achievements  of  thought.  It  marks 
properly  the  final  stage  of  an  inquiry,  the  final  deposit  of  full  and  exhaustive 
thinking.  At  this  point,  however,  some  rough,  provisional  limitation  of 
terms  may  guard  against  later  error  and  may  aid  in  the  setting-up  of  my 
working  hypothesis.  The  two  words  in  my  title  requiring  some  sort  of 
explanation  are  aesthetic  and  experience.  I  shall  speak  first  of  experience, 
since  it  is  a  new,  albeit  a  fashionable,  word  in  current  philosophical  writing, 
and  its  use  perhaps  needs  justification.  I  employ  it  in  no  pecuUarly 
technical  sense,  and  yet  with  a  shade  more  of  precision  than  in  its  use  in 
popular  speech,  which  talks  much  of  experience  in  bulk  as  well  as  of  various 
experiences.  The  chief  merit  of  the  term  to  my  mind,  and  the  reason  why 
I  prefer  it  to  "consciousness,"  is  just  the  fact  that  it  seems  to  link  our  dis- 
cussion of  the  aesthetic  to  concrete,  everyday  living,  to  point  out  its  intimate 
A    relations  to  other  types  of  experience.    An  "experience"  must  be  some- 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  27 

thing  warm  and  human;  it  cannot  be  a  mere  pale  abstraction  without 
organic  connection  with  other  aspects  of  living.  Furthermore,  "experience 
is  without  the  subjective  connotation  rightly  or  wrongly  knit  up  with  the 
word  'consciousness.'  "  It  implies  a  total  concrete  situation,  not  invidious 
psychological  distinctions  of  subject  and  object,  words  regarding  which  we 
sometimes  feel  a  touch  of  Carlyle's  impatience  when  he  described  Coleridge 
as  continually  droning  about  "  sum-m-mject "  and  "  om-m-mject."  Experi- 
ence, again,  ranges  the  aesthetic  on  the  side  of  immediate  awareness  of 
value,  which  is  one  of  the  aspects  of  the  aesthetic  that  I  wish  to  emphasize, 
in  distinction  from  the  subsequent  critical  judgments  that  are  made  upon 
the  aesthetic  moment.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood,  however,  to  be 
drawing  any  hard  and  fast  hne  of  demarkation  between  the  judgmental 
and  the  immediate  aspects  of  conscious  hfe.  All  consciousness  is  valuational 
as  I  have  already  stated,  and  in  so  far  judgmental.  What  I  have  said 
about  the  distinction  between  mediate  and  immediate  experience  indicates 
the  broad  difference  between  the  two  types.  Thus  far,  I  have  been  merely 
making  explicit  the  meanings  latent  in  the  term  as  used  in  daily  life.  Be- 
yond that,  I  wish  to  warn  against  the  popular  tendency  to  speak  of  "experi- 
ence" in  the  lump  as  of  something  passive  and  finished.  My  use  of  the 
word  involves  the  notion  of  something  continually  going  on,  developing; 
an  activity,  not  a  state  nor  an  entity,  as  "consciousness"  is  sometimes 
taken  to  do. 

Aesthetic  is  a  term  about  which  clusters  a  host  of  vague  and  overlapping 
meanings.  In  its  derivation  signifying  merely  sense-perception,:  and  so  used 
by  Kant  in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  it  was  first  applied  by  Baumgarten 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  the  philosophy  of  the  beautiful. 
It  is  commonly  used  today  as  a  rather  pretentious  synonym  for  "artistic," 
and  is  applied  to  objects  and  to  personal  standards  of  taste  and  criticism. 
In  philosophy  and  psychology  it  appears  in  such  terms  as  "the  aesthetic 
judgment,"  the  aesthetic  object,"  "the  aesthetic  attitude,"  "aesthetic 
feeling  and  emotion."  As  I  am  using  it,  the  term  characterizes  a  certain 
type  of  concrete  conscious  experience,  having  a  high  sense  of  immediate 
and  specialized  value  inhering  in  a  more  or  less  definite  object,  and  possess- 
ing a  strong  and  pleasantly  colored  "  f eehng-tone " — if  this  can  be  justly 
distinguished  from  the  awareness  of  value  already  spoken  of.  It  refers  to  a 
special  type  of  consciousness,  not  to  subsequent  reflection  upon  it,  and  to 
the  aesthetic  object  only  as  the  core  of  this  consciousness,  not  as  studied 
independently.  It  is,  therefore,  both  wider  and  narrower  in  its  range  than 
is  the  term  "artistic."  It  applies  to  experiences  far  vaguer  than  those 
generally  recognized  as  involving  artistic  creation  and  appreciation,  though 


28  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

they  can  be  identified  by  the  expert  as  of  the  same  nature.  On  the  other 
hand;  it  does  not  apply,  ;as  I  use  it,  to  the  study  of  the  artistic  object  apart 
from  its  immediate  apprehension  in  the  aesthetic  experience,  or  to  any 
technical  or  merely  literary  formulation  of  the  principles  of  artistic  pro- 
cedure or  criticism.  I  shall  essay  to  show  the  source  of  such  formulations, 
but  not  to  discuss  them.  It  leaves  "artistic"  to  cover  the  object  of  art  as 
such  and  the  whole  field  of  practical  activities  connected  with  it  and  critical 
judgments  made  upon  it,  so  far  as  these  are  not  based  upon  inquiry  into 
the  nature  of  the  experience  itself.  These  things  may  be  considered  in  a 
general  study  of  aesthetic  theory,  not  in  a  study  of  the  "aesthetic  experience  " 
proper. 

With  the  ground  thus  cleared  by  some  narrowing  of  the  terms  used, 
let  us  see  what  point  we  have  reached  in  our  endeavor  to  place  the  aesthetic 
experience.  I  have  given  a  sketch  of  the  position  taken  by  functional 
psychology  as  I  conceive  it,  indicating  what  I  mean  by  mediate  and  by 
immediate  experience,  and  ranging  the  aesthetic,  provisionally  at  least, 
under  the  immediate  type.  I  have  summarized  the  striking  characteristics 
of  the  aesthetic  experience  as  familiar  to  common  observation  and  as  agreed 
upon  by  widely  differing  schools.  I  have  noted  the  chaotic  state  of  the 
literature  of  aesthetics,  and  have  tried  to  put  my  own  use  of  terms  in  an 
unambiguous  light.  It  now  remains  to  discover  how  far  we  can  bring  our 
own  introspective  analysis  and  the  ordinary  theoretical  accounts  of  the 
aesthetic  experience  into  agreement  with  the  account  of  the  nature  and 
movement  of  experience  furnished  by  functional  psychology. 

VI.      THE  "aesthetic  MOMENT"  IN  THE  REFLECTIVE  PROCESS 

For  a  clue  in  our  inquiry  we  may  turn  to  the  type  of  mental  experience 
commonly  held  to  lie  at  the  opposite  pole  from  the  aesthetic,  namely,  the 
operation  of  reflective  thought,  to  what  has  been  called  mediate,  recon- 
structive, as  opposed  to  immediate  or  constitutive,  experience.  There  are 
two  reasons  for  this  appeal.  First,  the  reflective  or  judgment-process 
proper  has  been  more  thoroughly  analyzed  by  functional  psychology 
than  has  any  other  type  of  experience;  and,  second  and  more  important, 
it '.functions  as  the  prime  agency  in  the  reorganization  of  experience,  and 
in  so  doing  falls  apart  into  various  stages  and  aspects,  as  immediate,  organ- 
ized experience  cannot  do,  thus  revealing  the  structural  elements  of  which 
immediate  experience  is  composed.  As  I  sought  to  make  clear  in  my  first 
section,  all  experience,  as  we  know  it — that  is,  all  forms  of  meaning,  con- 
trol, knowledge — has  been  won  through  the  establishment  of  higher  and 
higher  types  of  co-ordination;    and  reflective  thought  represents  only  a 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  29 

complex  kind  of  co-ordinating  process,  incorporating  into  itself  innumer- 
able minor  co-ordinations.  Somewhere,  then,  in  the  career,  the  life-history, 
of  the  reflective  process  we  may  hope  to  find  a  stage  that  will  throw  light  on 
the  aesthetic  experience,  that  we  may  even  call  "aesthetic,"  though  it  be  not 
commonly  recognized  as  such.  If  we  can  identify  such  a  stage  in  the 
falling-apart  and  rebuilding  of  experience  involved  in  reflection,  it  will  help 
us  to  solve  the  problem  of  how  it  has  come  to  detach  itself,  and  to  stand  out 
as  an  independent  and  unique  type  of  consciousness,  as  well  as  the  corollary 
problem  of  the  effect  that  it  itself  has  on  subsequent  experience. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  do  more  than  to  repeat  the  statement  that  reflective 
thought  arises  only  when  immediate  or  smoothly  working  activity  has 
been  hindered  or  brought  to  a  standstill  through  some  difficulty  in  the 
carrying-out  of  an  end.  The  range  of  this  stoppage  of  action  is,  of  course, 
enormously  wide,  extending  from  a  momentary  hesitation  in  making  a  trifling 
local  response  to  a  widespread  disturbance  that  involves  the  whole  organism 
and  produces  prolonged  cessation  of  direct  outer  control.  From  the  slightest 
to  the  most  profound  case,  however,  the  disturbance  is  registered  in  con- 
sciousness as  emotional  seizure,  although,  when  the  arrest  is  insignificant, 
the  emotion  may  be  barely  at  the  conscious  level.  The  more  important 
and  more  widely  connected  are  the  organic  activities  involved,  the  keener  is 
the  awareness  of  emotional  agitation.  In  fact,  the  two  are  but  different 
ways  of  stating  the  same  experience,  as  Professor  James  has  shown.  Un- 
pleasantly toned  emotion  is  but  the  conscious  aspect  of  pent-up  organic 
activities,  thwarting  instead  of  reinforcing  one  another.  This  leads  to  the 
diffusion  of  feeling-states,  so  often  pointed  out.  Emotion  is  always  a  sign 
of  partial  inhibition,  of  some  sort  of  arrest  of  activities  that  normally 
complete  themselves  in  intelligent  behavior. 

After  the  first  clash  of  impulses,  and  the  resultant  sense  of  uneasiness 
and  distress,  comes  the  demand  for  reconstruction  and  renewed  control, 
leading  at  once,  if  the  obstacle  be  not  prohibitive,  to  the  attempt  to  take 
stock  of  the  disturbed  situation,  to  sort  out  the  warring  elements,  and  to 
work  them  over  into  some  kind  of  agreement.  If  this  process  proceed 
with  any  degree  of  success,  the  attention  fastens  upon  first  one  aspect  of 
the  situation,  then  another,  and  reshapes  or  eliminates  them  in  the  effort 
to  meet  the  new  demand.  As  this  critical  revision  continues,  the  area  of 
emotional  disturbance  narrows  and  its  acuteness  diminishes,  while  with  the 
advance  toward  mastery  emerges  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  that  increases 
as  the  area  of  adjustment  widens,  and  culminates  at  the  moment  when  things 
are  working  together  again,  and  the  situation  is  once  more  ready  to  com- 
plete and  transcend  itself  in  action.     The  dawning  of  this  sense  of  satisfac- 


30  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

tion  is  accordingly  a  signal  that  reconstruction  is  approaching  the  stage 
when  it  becomes  again  possible  to  act.  Its  intensity  is  commensurate  with 
the  degree  and  extent  of  the  initial  disturbance,  and  with  the  difficulty  or 
ease  of  the  intermediate  stages  of  reorganization. 

Here,  then,  within  the  history  of  the  reflective  process,  we  find  a  stage 

that  has  points  in  common  with  our  preliminary  description  of  the  aesthetic. 

It  appears  toward  the  close  of  intellectual  reconstruction,  is  a  sign  that  the 

v\  reconstruction  is  complete,  or  at  least  sufficiently  advanced  for  service  as  a 

guide  to  outward  action,  and  is  of  a  pleasant  emotional  tone.     Without 

this  testimony  on  the  part  of  consciousness,  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  would 

- 1  be  the  determining  point  for  the  cessation  of  reflection.     It  is  certainly 

'^  always  a  "  f eeUng-tone  "  of  some  sort  that  marks  oflf  one  type  of  experience 

;   from  another,  that  gives  each  its  individuality  and  value.  \This  "aesthetic 

moment "  at  the  close  of  every  specific  operation  of  reflective  thought  char- 

;   acterizes  the  moment  when,  as  Professor  Royce  puts  it,  "we  pause  satisfied." 

1  This  "pause  of  satisfaction "*  means  that  for  the  moment  we  exhaust  the 

1  situation,  feel  its  full  significance;   it  tells  us  also  that  our  means  and  ovir 

I  ends,  hitherto  at  odds,  have  become  once  more  consolidated ;  that  the  breach 

i  in  experience  is  healed ;  and  that  conduct  may  go  on,  modified  and  enriched 

I  through  the  intervention  of  thought./ 

It  is  aside  from  my  purpose  to  dwell  upon  the  various  stages  and  forms 
in  the  thought-process.  To  trace  them  is  the  business  of  the  student  of 
logic  and  of  the  psychology  of  reflective  thinking.  But  it  is  important  to 
repeat  that  the  pause  of  satisfaction  does  not  arise  altogether  suddenly. 
Throughout  the  course  of  reconstruction  minor  reconciliations  are  con- 
tinually effected,  as  the  inventory  and  manipulation  of  the  content  of  con- 
sciousness proceed;  and  these  herald  the  final  moment  of  co-operation  and 
restoration  among  all  the  forces  involved.  It  is  essential  to  recognize  that 
.  the  reconstruction  throughout  is  organic,  not  mechanical;  that  the  elements 
are  in  vital  relation  to  one  another  and  to  the  whole.  Change  in  one  involves 
change  in  all  and  in  the  determination  of  the  result  or  end.  But  so  long  as 
the  process  is  incomplete,  the  minor  satisfactions  are  local  and  more  or 
less  modified  by  the  still  existing  restriction  and  confusion ;  the  general 
satisfaction  is  vague  and  uncertain.  There  are  alternations  or  waves  of 
satisfaction  and  dissatisfaction.  It  Is  not  unfair  to  say  that  the  process  is 
rhythmical,  made  up  at  first  of  a  number  of  minor  and  conflicting  rhythms, 
which  become  gradually  incorporated  into  a  larger  major  rhythm.     The 

I  World  and  Individual,  Vol.  I,  p.  330. 

»  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  XI,   "  Some  Logical  Aspects  of  Purpose" 
(A.  W.  Moore),  pp.  361-63. 


THE  PLACE  OF   THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  31 

experimental  studies  of  rhythm  point  out  the  way  in  which  a  larger  rhythm 
arises  out  of  simpler  rhythms,  laking  them  up  into  itself  and  binding  them 
together  into  a  unitary  whole,  to  the  rich  individuality  of  which  the  com- 
ponents make  subsidiary  but  distinctive  contribution.  The  first  appear- 
ance of  this  larger  rhythm  foreshadow:?  the  ultimate  pause  of  satisfaction. 
Developing  itself,  it  guides  and  shapes  the  varying  activities  within  its 
grasp,  so  that  these  irregular  movements  take  on  more  and  more  the  char- 
acter of  alternations  of  expectancy  and  fulfilment,  becoming  gradually 
harmonized  in  the  fully  satiofactory  experience.  Robert  MacDougall,  in 
his  exhaustive  study  of  the  rhythmic  experience,  shows  that  a  rhythm  thus 
develops  instead  of  merely  maintaining  itself.  It  is  not  a  bare  reiteration, 
but  a  growth,  in  which  each  phase  anticipates  the  next  and  is  modified  by 
those  preceding.  * '  Conclusive  evidence  of  the  integration  of  simple  rhythm 
forms  in  higher  structures  is  presented  by  the  process  of  increasing  defini- 
tion which  every  rhythmical  sequence  manifests  between  its  inception  and 
its  close."  There  is  "progres?ive  co-ordination.'"'  R.  H.  Stetson,*  in  a 
study  of  more  elaborate  rhythm  forms,  says  that 

the  essential  character  of  musical  rhythm,  as  contrasted  with  the  rhythm  both  of 
simple  sounds  and  of  verse,  is  just  this  co-ordination  of  a  number  of  rhythms  which 

move  side  by  side It  is  evident  in  cases  of  expressional   variations  of 

tempo  that  a  single  broad  rhythm  is  dominating  and  serving  as  a  cue  for  the 
other  more  elaborate  rhythmic  processes,  instead  of  being  regxxlated  by  them. 

In  the  world  of  objective  art-forms  the  modern  symphony  most  adequately 
illustrates  this  process  of  progressive  organization  of  complex  material.  It 
cai  ries  us  forward  on  waves  of  musical  tension  and  resolution  that  are  kept 
from  being  painful  only  by  our  sense  that  each  contributes  to  the  unfolding 
of  a  definite  whole,  which  dominates  every  phase  of  development,  however 
novel  it  may  seem  in  itself.  Each  intermediary  resolution  embraces  what 
has  gone  before  and  prophesies  the  final  and  complete  fulfilment,  through 
its  own  partial  inadequacy,  so  that  this  fulfilment  comes,  not  as  surprise, 
but  rather  as  culmination  and  reconciliation.  Although  we  cannot  find 
objective  parallels  for  every  aesthetic  process,  as  we  can  do  in  the  case  of 
modern  music,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  phenomena  of  rhythm  and  the  facts  of 
musical  construction  in  general  furnish  the  most  fruitful  modes  of  conceiving 
all  forms  of  aesthetic  experience.  Functional  psychology  recogni.^es  that 
the  various  types  of  experience  represent  complex  processes,  and  that  each 

I  "The  Structure  of  Simple  Rhythm  Forms,"  Psychological  Review,  Monograph. 
Supplements,  Vol.  IV  (Whole  No.  17),  p.  389. 
a  Ibid.,  pp.  465,  466. 


32  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

type  has  its  distinctive  "pattern."     The  pattern  of  integrated  rhythm- 
forms  seems  most  applicable  to  the  aesthetic  experience. 

To  say  that  the  aesthetic  assumes  the  "rhythmic  pattern"  is  only  to 
assert  that  it  represents  the  simultaneous  rather  than  the  serial  type  of 
organization;  that  it  carries  abreast  a  number  of  activities,  becoming 
progressively  integrated  and  resulting  in  an  equilibrium  of  tensions.  The 
"pause  of  satisfaction,"  accordingly,  is  but  the  formulation  in  terms  of 
emotion,  of  value,  of  what  I  have  already  called,  in  terms  of  structure  or 
content,  "the  aesthetic  image."  This  co-ordination  and  interaction  of 
coexisting  activities  accounts  both  for  its  emotional  character  and  for  the 
[fact  that  it  is^a  "pause,"  a  unique  experience,  recognized  as  such  and  not 
j  discharging  at  once  into  outward  action.  It  is  a  reservoir  of  attained 
j  values,  a  "saturation"  of  all  its  different  constituents.  It  is  too  rich  in 
manifold  possibilities  of  further  movement  to  overflow  at  once  into  any 
one  channel.  >  It  may  be  compared  to  the  f eeUng  one  has  in  looking  from  a 
mountain-top  over  a  wide  prospect,  with  hill  and  valley,  lakes,  streams, 
roads,  and  paths  spread  out  before  one.  There  are  so  many  ways  to  descend 
that  one  luxuriates  in  the  fulness  of  opportunity.  And  it  is  this  very 
exhilaration,  this  broadening  and  heightening  of  one's  sense  of  capacity, 
that  incites  to  the  perilous  scramble  down  the  rocks  rather  than  to 
retracing  one's  steps  by  the  well-blazed  trail.  In  other  words,  the  pause 
of  satisfaction  is  not  altogether  without  forward  reference,  not  wholly 
inclosed.  If  it  were,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  its  point  of  attachment 
to  the  rest  of  the  experiential  series.  But  it  is  only  indirectly,  as  the  tide 
of  satisfaction  surges  back  over  the  organism  and  acts  itself  as  a  new 
stimulus,  that  it  reinforces  some  one  or  other  of  the  co-operating  habits 
or  groups  of  habits  to  the  point  where  it  breaks  free  from  the  temporary 
aesthetic  co-ordination,  and  proceeds  to  function  independently,  thus 
bringing  about  a  resumption  of  ordinary  action.  The  significance  of  the 
aesthetic  experience  as  stimulus  is  often  overlooked  in  the  effort  to  explain 
what  it  is  in  itself.  But  it  cannot  be  ignored  in  any  attempt  to  relate  the 
aesthetic  to  the  problems  of  the  growth  and  control  of  experience. 

It  must,  furthermore,  be  kept  in' mind  that  the  distinction  between  the 
serial  and  the  simultaneous  types  of  organization  is  not  rigid.  Every  pro- 
cess involving  a  succession  of  stages  is  of  necessity  serial;  on  the  other 
hand,  all  forms  of  reconstruction  involve  the  interplay  and  co-ordination 
of  activities.  The  difference  between  the  two  tj^es — the  practical,  in  the 
large  sense  of  the  solution  of  problems,  whether  purely  intellectual,  ethical, 
economic,  or  material — and  the  aesthetic  is  rather  a  matter  of  different 
relations  of  means  and  ends.    In  the  one  case  they  are  brought  together 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  33 

only  with  difficulty,  by  means  of  search,  selection,  and  rejection.  Much  is 
eliminated  after  serving  its  immediate  purpose  as  means;  there  is  a  sense 
of  irksomeness  and  difficulty  up  to  the  last  step  in  the  process,  and  the  final 
solution  is  likely  to  be  marked  more  by  a  sense  of  relief  at  its  termination 
than  by  any  positive  satisfaction.  The  image  is  what  we  have  described  as 
a  working  image,  and  serves  promptly  as  a  cue  to  action.  Such  a  process 
is  obviously  serial,  and  the  aesthetic  moment  at  its  conclusion  is  at  its 
minimum,  though  necessarily  present,  and  is  commonly  unrecognized  as 
such.  In  the  other  case  means  and  end  develop  together,  and  the  end 
attains  full  value  and  significance  through  its  absorption  and  incorporation 
of  a  rich  and  varied  supply  of  means.  From  the  beginning  there  is  an 
anticipatory  survey  of  available  resources  that  must  be  carried  forward 
together  in  delicate  balance.  There  is  movement  here,  too,  modification 
and  revision;  but  the  values  won  at  different  stages  are  embodied  in  the 
result,  are  become  necessary  constituents  and  ingredients  of  the  whole, 
maintaining  themselves  in  active  equilibrium.  The  attainment  of  this  con- 
sohdation  and  harmonization  is  attended  by  a  widely  diffused  feeling  of 
satisfaction.  The  image  at  the  end  of  the  process  is  what  has  been  called 
the  "aesthetic  image,"  and  the  general  movement  has  been  of  the  simul- 
taneous order.  Whether  such  an  experience  is  definitely  characterized  as 
aesthetic  depends  on  the  range  of  activities  involved,  the  depth  and  width 
of  the  "pause  of  satisfaction."  If  it  suffuses  consciousness  and  absorbs 
attention,  it  has  every  right  to  be  called  aesthetic  in  the  accepted  sense  of 
the  term,  and  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  distinctive  experience,  set  off  from 
the  processes  leading  to  it. 

From  this  survey  of  the  process  of  reflective  thought,  we  find,  then, 
that  a  phase  which  may  be  called  aesthetic  in  character  arises  as  the 
culminating  stage  of  such  an  operation,  and  is  a  mark  of  successful  recon- 
struction. In  other  words,  it  shows  that  the  habits  or  activities  whose 
interference  led  to  the  necessity  of  readjustment  have  been  so  reorganized 
that  they  now  support  instead  of  checking  one  another.  Moreover,  the 
intensity  and  duration  of  this  phase  are  seen  to  depend  upon  the  number 
of  co-operating  activities  involved  and  the  intimacy  of  their  co-operation. 

This  view  has  few  claims  to  originality,  and  entirely  fails  to  answer 
certain  questions  raised  earlier  in  the  discussion.  But  it  is  not  inconsistent 
with  many  of  the  recent  accounts  of  the  aesthetic  experience.  It  may  be 
of  value  at  this  point  to  compare  it  with  some  of  the  better-known  modem 
formulations  of  the  aesthetic.  /Grant  Allen,  following  Spencer,  defines 
the  aesthetically  beautiful  as  "that  which  affords  the  Maximum  of  Stimu- 
lation with  the  Minimum  of  Fatigue  or  Waste,  in  processes  not  directly 


34  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

connected  with  vital  function."^  Passing  by  the  limitation  in  the  last 
phrase,  which  indicates  a  failure  to  discriminate  between  the  physiological 
and  the  psychological,  we  may  most  naturally  interpret  the  definition  as 
equivalent  to  my  statement  in  terms  of  a  large  number  of  simultaneously 
co-operating  activities.  It  says  nothing,  however,  regarding  the  conditions 
under  which  such  stimulation  arises.  Guyau  declares  that  the  aesthetic 
is  a  "simple  matter  of  degree,"  and  that  aesthetic  enjoyment  is  found 
wherever  we  have  in  consciousness  a  pleasure  with  the  maximum  of  exten- 
sion compatible  with  the  maximum  of  intention.*  This  is  quite  in  the 
quantitative  manner  of  Grant  Allen,  although  Guyau  substitutes  pleasure 
for  stimulation,  and  thus  emphasizes  the  emotional  rather  than  the  activity 
\/  side  of  the  experience.     "Aesthetic  emotion,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "seems 

thus  to  consist  essentially  in  an  enlargement,  a  sort  of  resonance  of  sensation 
throughout  our  whole  being,  especially  through  our  intelligence  and  our 
wilk  It  is  an  accord,  a  harmony,  among  our  sensations,  our  thoughts 
and  o\ir  sentiments. "^  These  statements  are  on  the  descriptive  and  not  on 
the  explanatory  level,  but  they  reiterate  in  a  striking  fashion  the  character- 
istics that  we  have  pointed  out  in  the  "pause  of  satisfaction."  Guyau 
lays  special  stress  on  the  fact  that  the  aesthetic  experience  is  a  unification 
of  many  factors,  a  "harmony"  of  our  natures. 

Other  writers  dwell  on  the  emotional  heightening  in  the  aesthetic  experi- 
ence. Theodore  Lipps  calls  it  the  psychische  Gesamterregung,  die  all- 
gemein-"  Stimmtmg"  der  Ajfekt;^  and  Hirn  points  out  that  a  heightened 
sense  of  vitaUty,  a  marked  degree  of  emotional  excitation,  is  one  of  the 
primary  characteristics  of  the  aesthetic  consciousness.  5  Professor  Kate 
Gordon  in  a  recent  thesis  defines  beauty  as  "that  which  unexpectedly 
offers  a  secondary  or  auxihary  stimulus  to  any  act;"  and  says  further: 

I  should  say  that  the  facility  of  the  adjustment  would  be  the  criterion  of  an 
aesthetic  situation;  if  the  old  habit  were  soon  found — i.  e.,  struck  into  by  a  short- 
cut and  followed  down  without  resistance — the  experience  would  Ijc  aesthetic; 
but  if  there  were  a  long  delay,  and  the  two  opposing  lines  of  excitation  were 
obliged  to  worry  out  a  new  path,  then  the  experience  would  be  merely  practical. 
The  aesthetic  consciousness  in  the  former  case  would  depend  on  the  nimiber  and 
the  depth  of  such  by-paths.^ 

I  Op.  cit.,  p.  39. 
r!    a  Les  prohlhmes  de  I'esthitique  contemporaine,  pp.  72,  73. 

3  Ibid. 

4  "Von  der  Form  der  aesthetischen  Apperception,"  Philosophische  Abhand- 
lungen  (Halle,  1902),  p.  387. 

5  The  Origins  of  Art,  pp.  70,  71,  82-85. 

6  The  Psychology  of  Meaning,  p.  10. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  35 

Although  Dr.  Gordon's  statement  is  couched  in  terms  of  physiology  rather 
than  of  psychology,  her  distinction  between  the  aesthetic  and  the  practical — 
the  degree  of  ease  in  making  the  adjustment — would  seem  to  correspond 
to  my  distinction  between  the  serial  and  simultaneous  types  of  operation; 
and  she  also  makes  the  intensity  of  the  experience  depend  on  the  number 
and  pattern  of  its  constituents.  Her  analysis  is  in  the  interest  of  a  general 
study  of  meaning  or  value,  and  her  characterization  of  beauty  as  that  which 
unexpectedly  offers  a  secondary  stimulus  evidently  has  reference  to  the 
indirect,  resurgent  effect  of  the  aesthetic  experience,  acting  as  stimulus  to 
further  conduct  of  a  different  type.  Dr.  Ethel  Puffer,  whose  study  of  the 
Psychology  of  Beauty  has  appeared  since  this  essay  was  first  written,  gives  an 
account  of  the  aesthetic  that  in  many  ways  parallels  mine,  although  with 
considerable  diversity  of  purpose  and  emphasis.  She  defines  the  aesthetic 
feeling  as  a  combination  of  favorable  stimulation  and  repose:    • 

The  only  aesthetic  repose  is  that  in  which  stimulation  resulting  in  impulse  to 
movement  or  action  is  checked  or  compensated  for  by  its  antagonistic  impulse; 
inhibition  of  action,  or  action  returning  upon  itself,  combined  with  heightening 
of  tone.  But  this  is  tension,  equilibrium,  or  balance  of  forces,  which  is  thus  seen 
to  be  a  general  condition  of  all  aesthetic  experience.^ 

Santayana  says  in  his  last  volume,  Reason  in  Art: 

An  aesthetic  sanction  sweetens  all  successful  living  ....  An  aesthetic  glow 
may  pervade  experience,  but  that  circumstance  is  seldom  remarked;  it  figures 
only  as  an  influence  working  subterraneously  on  thoughts  and  judgments  which 
in  themselves  take  a  cognitive  or  practical  direction.  Only  when  the  aesthetic 
ingredient  becomes  predominant  do  we  exclaim,  "How  beautiful!"* 

In  these  statements  I  find  support  for  my  contention  that  the  aesthetic  means 
successful  functioning,  and  marks  the  completion  of  every  activity,  though 
in  ordinar)'  non-aesthetic  e.xperience  it  is  not  recognized  as  such,  and  reveals 
itself  only  to  deliberate  analysis. 

My  account  of  the\aesthetic  experience  is  then,  for  the  present  at  least,  / 
that  it  always  involves  a  cluster  of  activities,  functioning  together  with  I 
mutual  reinforcement,  an  "equilibrium  of  tensions."  '  This  is,  howeverf^ 
hardly  more  than  a  descriptive  statement.     We  have  still  to  inquire  more 
fully  how  the  independent  experience  arises,  maintains  itself,  and  disappears. 
Moreover,  the  placing  of  the  aesthetic  moment  at  the  end  of  the  reflective 
process  seems  to  make  it  the  outcome  of  anterior  conflict  and  inhibitions. 
In  the  most  conspicuous  instances  of  our  individual  aesthetic  experiences 
this  precedent  disturbance  is  apparently  strikingly  absent.     How  are  we  to 

'  P.  50. 

'  Pp.  188,  193,  194. 


36  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

reconcile  the  two  views  ?  Following  the  lead  of  current  thinking  on  other 
types  of  experience,  we  may  throw  light  on  these  questions,  and  others  that 
we  have  asked,  by  seeking  to  place  the  aesthetic  in  the  life-history  of  the 
race  and  with  regard  to  certain  general  considerations  of  social  psychology. 


PART  II 
THE  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 
I.      TYPICAL  AESTHETIC  PERIODS  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  RACE 

In  the  historic  series,  so  far  as  it  has  been  reconstructed  for  us  with  any 
degree  of  fulness,  there  are  two  periods  of  pre-eminent  interest  for  the 
student  of  the  aesthetic  experience.  These  are  the  period  of  the  fifth  and 
fourth  centuries  b.  c.  in  Greece,  and  the  Renaissance  period  of  the  fourteenth, 
fifteenth,  and  sixteenth  centuries  in  Europe,  particularly  in  Italy.  Lesser 
periods  are  those  of  the  florescence  of  early  Christian  art,  of  French 
classicism,  and  of  the  Romantic  movement  of  the  late  eighteenth  and 
early  nineteenth  centuries.  Special  movements  worthy  of  note  are  the  rise 
and  development  of  the  modern  novel  and  of  modern  music.  An  art  that 
we  are  just  beginning  to  know,  and  that  throws  valuable  light  on  the  whole 
aesthetic  problem  through  its  very  detachment  from  our  standards  and 
associations,  is  the  art  of  the  Japanese. 

The  flowering  time  of  Greece  and  the  Renaissance  are  periods  often  com- 
pared. They  possess,  indeed,  striking  points  of  likeness,  different  as  were 
their  temper  and  their  artistic  products.  Both  are  late  chapters  in  the  long, 
obsciure  story  of  man's  social  career  and  relatively  late  in  the  specific  phases 
of  development  to  which  they  belong.  Both  are  preceded  by  ages  of  limita- 
tion, of  material  and  intellectual  poverty,  and,  more  immediately,  by  times 
of  disorder  and  confusion.  The  parallel  between  Europe  and  Greece  is 
thus  drawn  in  a  recent  history  of  modern  Europe: 

The  history  of  modem  Europe  presents,  in  fact,  as  much  unity  as  that  of 
Greece  in  early  times.  Composed  of  a  cluster  of  independent  states,  of  which 
one,  now  Athens,  now  Sparta,  now  Thebes,  aspired  to  the  hegemony,  her  only 
rallying  cry  was  against  the  barbarians,  as  that  of  Christendom  was  against  the 
infidels,  whilst  her  chief  bond  of  union  was  also  a  religious  one,  manifested  in  the 
Amphictyonic  Council  and  the  games  at  Olympia  and  elsewhere,  which  bear 
some  analogy  to  the  General  Councils  and  the  festivals  of  the  Roman  Church.' 

Turning  to  the  history  of  Greece,  we  find  that  its  details  are  obscure 
before  the  age  of  the  Tyrants  in  the  late  seventh  and  the  sixth  centuries. 
The  shiftings  of  population,  first  in  the  so-called  Dorian  migrations  and  later 
in  the  colonization  movement,  is  the  aspect  that  stands  out  most  conspicu- 
ously. But  the  Homeric  poems  and  other  early  Uteratures  bring  before  us 
with  remarkable  fulness  the  social  and  political  standards  and  ideals  of  the 
I  Dyer  and  Hassall,  History  of  Modern  Europe,  p.  3. 

37 


38  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

Greeks  of  the  pre-migration  and  migration  periods.  Moreover,  the  researches 
of  archaeology  and  of  comparative  anthropology  are  constantly  pushing 
back  the  boundary  lines  of  the  historic,  and  affording  us  glimpses  down 
long  vistas  of  the  prehistoric  past.     Such  glimpses  of  Greece  show  us 
small,  hardy  village-communities,  involved  more  or  less  continually  in  local 
raids  and  quarrels,  and  wringing  a  scanty  livelihood  from  the  soil  or  from 
the  hazards  of  a  half-piratical  sea-faring  life.     Their  social  life  was  still  a 
matter  of  group-maintenance,  controlled  by  custom,  specific  and  traditional; 
their  religion  was  still  a  bundle  of  savage  primitive  survivals,  pointing  to 
times  of  yet  ruder  organization.*     But  the  diversities  of  Greek  topography, 
both  seaboard  and  inland,  had  brought  about  diversity  of  occupations; 
and  these  varied  occupations  were  sufficiently  precarious  to  develop  a  vigor 
and  keen-wittedness  able  and  eager  to  cope  with  larger  problems.     Long 
before  the  dawn  of  authentic  history  the  Greeks  had  lifted  themselves 
above  the  level  of  struggle  for  mere  subsistence;  but  the  margin  won  was 
too  shifting  to  be  secure  without  skilful  manipulation  of  man  and  of  nature. 
Hence  a  constant  sharpening  of  intelligence,  a  disposition  to  rely  on  men 
rather  than  on  things,  a  widening  of  the  range  of  problems  grappled  with 
and  of  control  secured.     This  widening  of  range  is  shown  by  the  accounts 
of  the  wars  and  leagues  of  early  post-Homeric  days;  by  the  expansion  of 
commerce  and  the  extensive  planting  of  colonies  in  both  the  eastern  and  the 
western  Mediterranean;   by  the  development  of  the  "village-community" 
into  the  "city-state,"  and  the  accompanying  poUtical  struggles  and  reforms. 
Such  a  bewildering  accumulation  of  new  occupations  and  interests,  such  a 
reaching-out  toward  varied  ends  as  yet  imperfectly  understood  and  con- 
trolled, led  inevitably  to  widespread  conflict  of  issues  and  to  resultant  con- 
fusion.    Thus  in  Athens  the  growth  of  trade  brought  about  collisions 
between  the  newly  rich  merchant  class  and  the  old  landholders ;  intensified 
the  economic  distress  of  the  peasants,  and  drove  them  to  make  common 
cause  with  the  commercial  and  industrial  classes.^     Clever  political  leaders, 
seizing  some  advantage  of  birth  or  wealth,  played  off  one  class  against 
another,  and  established  tyrannies  that  gave  temporary  stability.     But  the 
forces  working  throughout  the  state  were  too  powerful  to  remain  long  in 
any  sort  of  externally  imposed  and  premature  union.     The  tyrants  in  many 
cases,  it  is  true,  contributed  to  the  accumulaton  of  both  material  and  intel- 
lectual resources;  they  stored  up  means  and  supplies.     But  that  was  only 
constructing  a  new  center  of  conflict  around  which  the  other  forces  swirled 
and  eddied.    A  general  stirring  and  heightening  of  emotional  and  intellec- 

'  Cf.  A.  Lang,  Myth  Ritual  and  Religion,  Vol.  I,  chap.  9;  Vol.  II,  chap.  17. 

»  Cf.  W.    Cunningham,   Western   Civilization  in  Its  Economic  Aspects,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  99-102. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  39 

tual  life  accompanied  the  rapid  changes  in  economic,  social,  and  political 
affairs.  The  body-politic  was  small  enough  for  all  citizens  to  meet  for  dis- 
cussion in  the  market-place;  everyone  shouldered  some  civic  responsibility; 
sailors  and  merchants  told  of  adventurous  voyages  to  every  coast  of  the 
Mediterranean,  and  of  the  "manners,  climates,  councils,  governments" 
there  encountered;  returned  colonists  from  Ionia  or  Magna  Graecia 
boasted,  no  doubt,  of  the  superior  opportunities  of  their  new  homes,  and 
thus  led  the  stay-at-homes  to  marshal  their  own  advantages.  It  was  a 
world  whose  dominant  mental  attitude  is  reflected  in  Herodotus — curious, 
restless,  shrewd,  yet  credulous.  The  air  was  charged  with  new  and  varied 
interests  and  expectations,  but  men  were  still  dazzled  and  a  little  amazed  by 
the  many  prospects  opening  before  them.  They  felt  a  sense  of  youthful 
exhilaration  rather  than  of  achievement  or  secure  possession,  of  power 
rather  than  of  control.     They  had  not  yet  actually  put  themselves  to  the  test. 

In  certain  important  fields,  however,  they  had  already  won  solid  results. 
The  problem  of  government,  involving  the  transformation  of  the  village- 
community,  dependent  on  common  food-supply,  blood-kinship,  and  local 
worship,  into  the  city-state,  had  been  practically  worked  out.  Democratic 
government  had  arisen  to  hold  the  fluctuating  elements  within  the  city-state 
in  some  sort  of  working  equilibrium;  the  scattered  religious  cults,  though 
not  superseded,  had  been  embraced  within  the  general  worship  of  the  pan- 
Hellenic  Olympian  deities,  and  were  being  purged  of  their  worst  crudities; 
race-con§ciousness  had  been  deepened  by  common  festivals  and  by  inter- 
course with  the  "barbarians."  What  was  needed  was  the  welding  together, 
the  generalization  and  synthesizing,  of  all  these  elements  in  Greek  life. 

This  was  effected  through  the  supreme  test  of  the  Persian  wars.  The 
whole  of  Greek  life  and  civilization  was  at  stake.  It  was  a  tremendous 
emotional  crisis,  in  which  the  exultation  of  victory  followed  hard  upon 
the  realization  of  peril.  Such  a  transition  from  the  darkest  apprehension 
to  the  fulness  of  success  is  hardly  to  be  found  elsewhere  in  history  save  at 
the  time  of  the  Spanish  Armada.  That  it  did  not  plunge  the  Greeks,  and 
particularly  the  Athenians,  into  mere  vainglorious  boasting  is  chiefly  due 
to  the  conditions  under  which  they  had  already  made  their  gains  in  civiliza- 
tion. Shut,  although  not  imprisoned,  within  their  little  states;  unused  to 
great  wealth  or  bitter  poverty;  made  fertile  in  expedient,  yet  steadfast  in 
the  face  of  danger  through  the  vicissitudes  of  a  seafaring  life;  trained  to 
self-reliance  and  watchfulness  through  their  form  of  government  as  well  as 
through  their  occupations,  they  had  reached  a  degree  of  poise  that  enabled 
them  to  meet  with  surprising  equanimity  both  the  suspense  and  the  triumph 
of  the  Persian  wars.     Much  has  been  written  to  account  for  the  origin  of  the 


40  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

Greek  conception  of  law  as  moderation — the  principle  of  nothing  in  excess. 
The  growth  of  the  notion  may  be  traced  in  many  fields,  but  in  general  it  is 
enough  to  indicate  that  it  is  the  formulation  of  what  the  Greeks  met  at  every 
turn  in  their  practical  active  experience.  It  was  this  same  poise,  these  same 
habits  of  moderation  in  thought  and  action,  that  shielded  them  from  the 
effects  of  contact  with  Asiatic  despotism  and  luxury.  Though  these  things 
may  have  kindled  imagination  and  added  to  wealth,  they  were  so  indissolubly 
associated  with  the  "barbarians,"  so  alien  to  the  traditions  and  ideals  of 
Hellas,  that  they  were  looked  upon  with  contempt.  It  was  not  by  store 
of  things,  nor  by  power  based  on  the  treating  of  men  as  things,  that  the 
Greeks  had  conquered.  It  was  the  contrast  in  all  respects  between  the 
Greeks  and  the  Persians — in  numbers,  in  wealth,  in  political  organiza- 
tion, in  physical  prowess,  in  intelligence — that  gave  such  exquisite  point 
to  Athenian  pride,  that  led  the  Athenians  to  discriminate  the  qualities  in 
Greek  civilization  at  the  same  time  that  it  heightened  their  sense  of  its  value. 

And  this  glow  of  pride,  this  sense  of  great  achievement  based,  not  on 
material  strength,  but  on  human  character,  which  filled  the  soul  of  every 
free-born  citizen  of  Athens,  was  felt  most  intensely  by  the  great  artists  of 
the  time,  and  found  most  complete  embodiment  in  the  plays  of  Aeschylus 
and  Sophocles,  in  the  sculptures  of  the  Parthenon.  These,  in  their  turn, 
defined  and  reinforced  the  feeling  in  the  minds  of  the  beholders.  Such 
works  of  art  both  heighten  and  relieve  emotion — heighten  by  focusing  on 
a  particular  object,  and  relieve  by  giving  order  and  coherence  to  what 
otherwise  remains  vague  and  diffused.  Greek  art  is  fundamentally  "Art 
the  Reliever."*  Nowhere  do  we  feel  so  much  the  force  of  Aristotle's 
aesthetic  principle  of  "katharsis."  It  clarifies  and  steadies  emotion  by 
centering  it  upon  objects  that  possess  pre-eminently  the  rhythmic  poise  and 
balance  of  the  Greek  mind.  Such  an  art  uplifts  rather  than  excites.  It 
ennobles  and  assuages. 

In  the  highest  development  of  Greek  art,  then,  of  Greek  aesthetic  experi- 
ence— to  put  it  into  terms  of  the  situation  in  which  the  work  of  art  has 
its  birth  and  its  effect — we  find  the  coalescence,  or  at  least  the  intimate 
co-operation,  of  a  large  number  of  activities  and  interests  that  had  been 
developed  through  a  long  period  of  precedent  effort,  had  been  worked  out 
as  separate  ends  and  used  as  means  in  various  piursuits.  These  interests, 
dispositions,  customs,  attitudes,  call  them  what  you  will,  instead  of  exist- 
ing in  isolation,  or  in  partial  and  often  antagonistic  combination,  have 
become  mutually  supporting,  interwoven,  and  so  changed  in  the  process  that 
they  are  lost  sight  of  as  independent  elements  and  persist  only  as  contrib- 
»  Cf.  Him,  op.  cit.,  pp.  70,  71. 


/ 


SOCIAL   ASPECTS   OF  THE   AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE  4I 

utory  forces,  giving  to  the  whole  its  unique  power  of  stimulation  and  tran- 
quilization.  To  say  this  is  to  say  that  they  are  in  emotional  solution,  and 
yet  brought  together  around  that  concrete  core  that  we  call  the  imaged  or 
actualized  aesthetic  object. 

European  life  before  and  during  the  Renaissance  goes  through  much  the 
same  stages  that  Athenian  life  went  through,  though  on  a  larger  scale  and 
with  a  far  greater  array  of  jostling  forces.  It  is  peculiarly  dij6&cult  to 
simimarize  a  period  in  one  sense  so  transitional,  in  another  so  full  and  so 
unique  in  character.  One  is  in  danger  of  being  either  dogmatic  or  vague, 
and  is  likely  to  end  by  being  both. 

The  Middle  Ages  have  been  redeemed  from  the  sweeping  charges  of 
sterility  and  limitation  that  used  to  be  brought  against  them.  Our  deep- 
ened sense  of  the  continuity  of  experience  has  taught  us  that  we  cannot  ban 
any  age  at  wholesale.  Whatever  its  total  of  accomplishment,  it  has  within 
it  all  the  essential  manifestations  of  human  experience  and  intelligence. 
But,  looked  at  in  the  large,  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire  at  the  hands 
of  a  rude  but  vigorous  people  at  a  far  lower  level  of  culture  brought  about 
a  time  of  turbulence  and  confusion  in  which  the  Roman  ideas  of  system, 
law,  and  authority,  surviving  the  wreckage  of  the  actual  machinery  of  govern- 
ment, contended  with  the  Germanic  idea  of  local  group-independence  and 
blood-loyalty.     Kuno  Franke  says  of  the  era  of  migration: 

The  first  appearance  of  Germanic  tribes  in  the  foreground  of  European  his- 
tory, the  influx  of  the  northern  barbarians  into  the  decaying  civilization  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  is  marked  by  a  dissolution  of  all  social  bonds.  Severed  from 
their  native  soil,  thrust  into  a  world  in  which  their  ancestral  faith,  customs,  insti- 
tutions have  no  authority,  the  Teutons  of  the  era  of  the  migrations  experience  for 
the  first  time  on  a  grand  scale  the  conflict  between  universal  law  and  individual 
passion.  ^ 

But,  as  he  points  out,  this  conflict  was  not  altogether  destructive.  Out  of  it 
emerged  the  two  great  institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages — feudalism,  culmin- 
ating in  the  mediaeval  empire,  and  the  mediaeval  church.  These  two 
furnished  an  all-embracing,  if  highly  formal,  scheme  of  organization,  and 
held  in  check  the  centrifugal  forces  of  the  times.  But  necessary  as  we  see 
them  to  have  been  as  initial  movements  in  the  ultimate  efficient  co-operation 
of  these  forces  they  imposed  an  artificial  and  schematic  unity  that  failed  to 
allow  for  many  aspects  of  life.  As  movement  from  place  to  place  was  for 
the  bulk  of  the  people  impossible  under  feudalism,  so  was  intellectual 
activity  circumscribed  by  the  system  which  fostered  it.  Possible  only  in 
detachment  from  the  stress  of  practical  life,  it  flourished  in  the  shelter  of 
»  Social  Forces  in  German  Literature,  p.  3. 


42  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

the  church ;  and  there,  cut  off  from  vital  human  problems,  tended  to  become 
rigid  and  formalized,  spending  itself  on  the  effort  to  rationalize  dogmas  that 
had  been  inherited,  often  in  perverted  form,  from  another  civilization. 
If  it  sought  to  deal  at  first  hand  with  life,  it  came  into  collision  with  the  sys- 
tem that  supported  it.  It  was  only  the  exceptional  man  that  threw  off  even 
partially  the  yoke  of  fixed  universals,  rigid  preconceptions  that  governed 
in  different  forms  the  life  of  scholarship,  of  war,  and  of  trade.  Yet  in  all 
these  departments  of  life  tools  were  forging  and  sharpening,  force  was 
disciplining  and  growing  eager  to  try  its  metal.  Actual  life  was  bursting 
the  bonds  of  formula.  And  with  the  growth  of  the  quarrel  between  the 
papacy  and  the  empire,  tending  to  the  discrediting  of  both  artificial  systems ; 
with  the  vitalizing  influence  of  the  Crusades  in  their  weakening  of  feudalism 
and  their  tremendous  impetus  both  to  commerce  and  to  learning;  with  the 
organization  of  the  industrial  class,  and  the  emergence  of  the  modern 
languages  and  the  modern  national  governments,  came  a  loosening  of  bonds, 
an  upsetting  of  old  ideas,  an  awakening  to  new  interests  and  to  new  and 
individual  standards  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the  race.  All  these 
elements,  seething  together  in  a  sort  of  ferment,  must  have  produced  in  the 
minds  of  men  a  wonderful  sense  of  liberation,  coupled  with  bewilderment 
and  uncertainty  regarding  the  use  of  this  newly  won  freedom.  Such  a  state 
of  mind  was  of  necessity  surcharged  with  emotion.  Either  without  definite 
outlet,  or  discharging  itself  in  hasty,  ill-considered,  and  abortive  conduct, 
this  emotional  consciousness  was  often  painful  in  character,  and  created 
new  complications  and  new  emotional  crises. 

Even  to  read  over  the  general  accounts  of  the  Renaissance,  such  as  those 
of  Symonds  and  Burckhardt,  or  the  more  sober  pages  of  the  Cambridge 
Modern  History  volume  on  the  period,  is  to  be  impressed  by  the  intricacy 
and  confusion,  but  also  by  the  richness,  of  its  interests — its  multitudinous 
stimulations  to  new  and  daring  modes  of  feeling,  thought,  and  conduct. 
It  was  a  whirling  world,  many  aspects  of  which  were  still  wavering  and 
fantastic,  and  others  in  paradoxical  contrast,  (it  requires  a  stretch  of  the 
modern  imagination  to  picture  the  highly  keyed  and  highly  colored  life  in 
an  Italian  city  of  the  Renaissance.  On  its  dynastic  side,  it  is  a  life  of  intrigue 
and  counter-intrigue,  of  unexpected  and  horrible  forms  of  violence. 
Symonds  paints  us  a  liu-id  portrait  of  the  successful  despot,  "a  gladiator 
of  tried  capacity  and  iron  nerve,  superior  to  religious  and  moral  scruples, 
dead  to  natural  affection,  perfected  in  perfidy,  scientific  in  the  use  of  cruelty 
and  terror,  employing  first-rate  faculties  of  brain  and  bodily  powers  in  the 
service  of  transcendent  egotism."^     It  is  a  life  punctuated  by  fierce  sieges, 

I  Age  of  the  Despots  (ed.  1888),  p.  1 18. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  43 

by  famines,  plagues,  wholesale  or  secret  murders.  But  it  is  also  a  life  of 
great  industrial  and  commercial  activity,  of  successful  war  and  diplomacy, 
of  civic  enrichment  and  adornment.  Campaigns,  splendid  festivals,  high 
enthusiasms  over  newly  discovered  treasures  of  classic  art  and  literature, 
over  "the  things  of  the  mind"  now  first  deemed  worthy  for  their  own  sake, 
exquisite  skill  in  fashioning  objects  of  daily  use  and  enjoyment — all  these 
things  are  an  integral  part  of  existence  in  cities  like  Florence  and  Venice  in 
the  climax  of  their  career.  Life  within  them  was  buoyant  and  animated, 
full  and  many-colored,  with  a  touch  of  youthful  recklessness  in  its  pulsating 
vigor,  and  at  times  a  strain  of  wistfulness,  as  of  too  much  to  experience  and 
to  enjoy. 

And  at  the  time  of  the  Renaissance,  as  in  Greece  during  her  brief  days 
of  greatness,  the  kaleidoscopic  content  of  experience  was  caught  and  given 
coherence  and  emphasis  through  a  supreme  art,  in  which  heterogeneous 
and  incongruous  elements  were  blended  and  harmonized  into  an  emo- 
tional unity  that  is  poignant  in  its  intensity.  What  influence  this  art  had 
upon  the  men  who  were  its  contemporaries  we  can  judge  only  imperfectly 
from  its  effect  upon  ourselves.  But  that  it  revealed  them  to  themselves 
in  some  fashion  we  cannot  doubt,  intensifying  their  consciousness  of  the 
life  they  were  leading,  making  them  feel,  as  nothing  except  art  can  do 
directly,  the  life-communicating  and  life-enhancing  power  of  the  events 
and  objects  of  their  experience.  Browning  gets  at  this  effect  of  art  in  his 
well-knowi^  lines: 

We're  made  so  that  we  love 
^  [  First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have  passed 

Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  cared  to  see. 

Renaissance  art  is  more  stimulating  and  less  reposeful  than  Greek  art. 
It  is  Art  the  Enhancer  rather  than  Art  the  Reliever.  But  it  too  reUeves, 
in  so  far  as  it  eliminates  disturbing  and  distracting  elements  and  concen- 
trates attention. 

We  find,  accordingly,  in  both  Greece  and  Italy,  at  the  dawn  of  their 
periods  of  greatest  artistic  productiveness,  a  throng  of  activities  and  inter- 
ests more  or  less  at  variance,  but  not  actually  excluding  one  another,  and 
operating  on  a  basis  of  general  economic,  social  and  political  organization. 
The  margin  thus  gained  has  led  to  a  multiplication  of  minor  conflicts  and 
interferences,  but  the  problems  are  no  longer  those  of  bare  maintenance, 
of  struggle  to  avoid  elimination  through  the  harshness  of  physical  nature 
or  at  the  hands  of  domestic  factions  or  of  external  foes.  The  problems 
are  rather  those  resulting  from  an  embarrassment  of  riches,  from  more 


44  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

stimulations  to  action,  more  new  fields  to  open  up  than  can  be  clearly 
grasped  or  adequately  managed.  Hence  the  pressing  necessity  of  some 
unifying  and  interpretative  statement,  and  the  appearance  of  this  state- 
ment in  the  aesthetic  consciousness  and  in  the  work  of  art. 

Of  the  other  periods  that  I  have  instanced  space  forbids  me  to  say 
more  than  a  few  words.  If  studied  with  care,  they  all  reveal  the  fact  that 
they  involve  to  a  greater  or  less  degree  an  immediate  emotional  conscious- 
ness of  the  interrelation  of  a  variety  of  activities. 

The  rise  of  early  Christian  art  follows  the  impact  and  interaction  of 
two  views  of  life — the  Graeco-Roman,  and  the  Hebraic  with  its  strong 
oriental  coloring.  Christian  art  is  an  imperfect  attempt  to  harmonize 
these  two  views,  both  so  rich  in  values  and  in  many  respects  so  unlike. 
Whether  the  chief  stimulus  to  this  art  came  through  Rome,  as  has  been  the 
classic  view,  or  directly  through  the  Hellenized  Orient,  as  is  maintained 
today,  does  not  alter  our  recognition  of  the  complex  nature  of  the 
constituent  elements.^ 

The  French  classicism  of  the  seventeenth  century  stands  for  the  inclos- 
ing of  the  fantastic  aspirations  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  youthful  exu- 
berance of  the  Renaissance  within  the  strait-jacket  of  a  spurious  classicism 
and  a  political  despotism.  It  is  a  movement  within  narrow  limits  and 
guided  by  artificial  formulas,  but  it  possessed  an  emotional  significance 
for  its  participants  that  it  does  not  possess  for  us,  and  we  are  likely  to 
overlook  the  range  of  its  contributory  influences.* 

The  romantic  movement,  on  the  other  hand,  from  whichever  of  its 
many  sides  we  approach  it,  shows  in  all  its  products  traces  of  the  multiple 
activities  that  went  to  its  compounding.  Within  it  play  many  of  the 
forces  that  we  call  distinctively  modem.  The  sharp  setting-over  of  the 
individual  against  society,  and  the  glorification  of  his  rights,  passions, 
and  aspirations;  the  emergence  of  a  deep  emotional  and  even  sentimental 
enthusiasm  for  external  nature  as  sharing  and  reflecting  the  moods  of 
"natural  man;"  the  dreams  of  a  regenerated  social  order  appear  aUke  in 
the  profound  political,  social,  and  moral  upheavals  and  readjustments 
of  the  times  and  in  the  great  philosophical  systems  and  great  literary 
masterpieces  which  it  produced.  The  series  of  historic  events  and  the 
series  of  artistic  and  intellectual  constructions  are  not  merely  parallel;  it 
is  their  vital  correlation  that  we  see  in  such  men  as  Goethe  and  Kant, 
Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  with  their  absorption  in  man's  largest  social 
welfare  as  well  as  in  his  artistic,  intellectual,  and  moral  freedom.    The 

I  Cf.  Josef  Strzygowski,  Orient  oder  Rom. 
-  (    «  Cf .  Arvfede  Barine,  La  Grande  Mademoiselle. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  4$ 

period  of  the  Romantic  movement  is  the  most  intense  of  the  periods  we 
have  surveyed.  Its  interests  and  activities  are  perhaps  not  so  wide  in 
range  as  those  of  the  Renaissance,  but  they  cut  deeper,  and  so  admit  of  less 
complete  resolution  and  absorption  in  the  aesthetic  consciousness.  The 
Romantic  work  of  art  heightens  emotion  and  the  sense  of  active  life  to  a 
high  degree.  It  stimulates  and  Uberates;  it  never  fully  harmonizes  and 
tranquilizes.  It  is  partly  on  this  account  that  it  takes  the  forms  of  litera- 
ture and  music  rather  than  of  painting  or  sculpture.  It  is  dynamic,  full 
of  the  stress  and  strain,  the  alternations  of  suspense  and  relief,  that  char- 
acterize human  passion  and  action.  And,  because  of  its  vehemence,  it 
falls  just  short  of  the  most  perfect  art,  since  it  overstimulates,  and  thus 
produces  fatigue  and  a  restless  sense  of  lurking  discord  and  division. 

As  special  manifestations  of  the  aesthetic  consciousness  in  modem 
times  we  cannot  afford  to  overlook  entirely  the  development  of  the  modern 
novel  and  of  modem  music.  The  novel  shows  the  modern  individual, 
restless,  many-sided,  inquiring,  interested  in  himself  and  in  his  own 
experiences,  whether  outer  or  inner;  eager  to  frame  his  own  generaliza- 
tions, not  to  accept  them  from  any  sort  of  authority.  A  lively  curiosity  re- 
garding the  details  of  personal  life  and  experience  animates  books  like 
Pepys'  Diary  and  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  as  well  as  the  Tatler  and  the 
Spectator  and  the  novels  of  Richardson,  Fielding,  and  Jane  Austen.  The 
Romantic  movement  proper  changed  the  current  of  fiction  for  Scott,  but  we 
still  have  the  wide  range,  the  loose  organization,  the  irregular  shift  and  play 
of  incident  and  character,  that  demand  the  novel  rather  than  the  drama 
as  their  vehicle.  With  later  nineteenth-century  fiction  broader  social  and 
humanitarian  interests  enter  in  on  the  one  side,  and  a  more  acute  and 
dynamic  psychology  on  the  other;  but  they  both  serve  as  means  of  throwing 
into  relief  the  essentials  of  individual  human  character  and  conduct  in  all 
their  manifold  variations. 

Of  modern  music  limitations  of  knowledge  even  more  than  of  space 
forbid  my  speaking.  But  its  late  appearance  shows  in  what  a  complex 
situation  it  takes  its  rise.  Its  rich  variety,  its  depth  and  scope  of  emotional 
appeal,  its  intricacies  of  harmony  and  rhythm,  all  fit  it  to  be,  as  it  is  often 
called,  the  characteristic  art  of  modern  life.  At  all  events  it  is  today  the 
most  vigorous  of  the  arts.  And  the  way  in  which  modern  music  is  con- 
stantly pressing  into  its  service  tonal  combinations  that  were  not  so  long 
ago  felt  to  be  distinctly  unmusical  is  the  most  conspicuous  example  before 
us  of  the  way  in  which  a  non-aesthetic  element  may  be  worked  over  and 
ultimately  become  contributory  to  a  new  and  richer  type  of  aesthetic 
experience.     As  the  symphonies  of  Beethoven  and  Schumann  interpreted 


46  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

with  majestic  sweep  and  breadth  the  yearnings  of  a  divided  Germany  reach- 
ing out  toward  national  life,  so  the  splendid  and  turbulent  music-dramas  of 
Wagner,  and  even  the  audacious  "tone-poems"  of  Richard  Strauss,  are 
helping  us  to  interpret  the  bewildering  complexities  of  the  life  we  are  trying 
to  live. 

In  all  the  periods  mentioned,  jdiflferent  as  they  were  in  content  and 
sketchily  as  I  have  characterized  them,  there  is  the  same  essential  situation — 
a  wide  basis  of  social  organization  and  achievement,  and  an  array  of  less 
stable  interests  and  activities,  overlapping  and  colliding  to  a  considerable 
extent,  but  sufficiently  in  hand  to  admit  of  further  correlation  and  unifica- 
cation.  The  immediate  realization  of  this  possible  unification  is  represented 
objectively  by  the  work  of  art,  psychologically  by  the  emotional  creative 
experience  of  the  artist  which,  embodied  in  his  work,  completes  and  syn- 
thesizes the  like  emotional  experience  in  the  minds  of  his  public.  In  the 
world  of  objective  social  values  as  in  the  world  of  mental  construction — 
though  each  is  an  abstraction  without  the  other — the  aesthetic  marks  the 
culminating  moment  in  a  process  of  elaborate  reorganization. 

To  what,  we  must  furthermore  ask  of  history,  led  the  great  periods 
of  artistic  production  that  we  have  been  canvassing  ?  Since  experience  is 
never  static,  what  modifications  in  national  life  were  brought  about  by  such 
times  of  artistic  triumph?  At  first  sight,  history  returns  a  disheartening 
reply.  The  Peloponnesian  wars  and  the  disintegration  of  Greek  life  fol- 
lowed close  upon  its  time  of  greatest  artistic  vigor.  In  Italy  the  splendors 
of  Renaissance  art  died  quickly  away  before  the  exploitation  of  the  country 
by  France  and  Spain,  and  the  rigors  of  the  Counter-Reformation.  It  is 
easy  to  be  misled  by  this  surface  view.  The  aesthetic  experience  in  the  race 
or  the  individual  does  not  lead  necessarily  to  specified  types  of  conduct. 
Fiurthermore,  the  work  of  art  is  only  one  influence  in  any  period.  To  say 
that  a  period  is  one  of  high  aesthetic  feeling  and  artistic  production  is  to 
say  that  it  cannot  last.  It  represents  the  summing-up  and  binding- 
together  of  many  forces;  it  is  a  time  of  survey  and  fulfilment.  And  the 
awareness  of  such  fulfilment  itself  brings  the  experience  to  an  end.  The 
heightened  feeling-tone,  the  sense  of  enlarged  vitality,  flow  back  over  the 
experience  as  a  whole,  and  affect  in  different  degrees  the  elements  entering 
into  it;  thus  their  delicate  equiHbrium  is  overthrown.  Just  what  aspects 
of  the  whole  are  forced  anew  into  prominence,  and  thus  into  interference 
with  others,  depends  entirely  upon  the  make-up  of  the  situation  and  upon 
outside  forces  pressing  in.  The  aesthetic  experience  has  served  its  purpose 
if  it  has  placed  the  state  or  the  individual  in  a  condition  to  face  new 
problems  with  increased  vigor.     It  supplies  a  new  level  of  approach;  it 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  47 

lifts  clear  of  old  entanglements.  Without  these  times  of  replenishment  of 
vigor,  of  emotional  apprehension  of  the  significance  of  its  life,  we  cannot 
tell  in  what  futile  struggles  and  disorders  the  energy  of  a  people  might  be 
squandered.  We  all  know  the  exhausting  and  depressing  effects  of  tm- 
remitting  effort.  It  is  in  moments  of  apparent  lull,  but  of  real  invigoration, 
that  nations  and  individuals  win  new  strength  and  new  outlook. 

n.      AESTHETIC  ORIGINS  IN  THE  RACE 

The  present  section  aims  to  develop  a  position  implied  in  the  preceding 
section.  If  the  aesthetic  experience,  recognized  as  such,  is  most  unequivo- 
cal in  social  situations  of  a  relatively  high  degree  of  complexity  and  organiza- 
tion, we  should  expect  to  find  it  revealing  itself  less  and  less  clearly  as  we 
go  back  along  the  line  of  social  development,  until  it  reaches  the  stage 
where  it  is  only  implicit  in  the  most  rudimentary  social  and  occupational 
activities.  Beginning  at  the  other  end  of  the  social  series,  I  shall  try  to 
show  that  the  aesthetic  emerges  and  develops  together  with  certain  favor- 
able types  of  social  organization.  In  using  the  term  "origin,"  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  understood  as  pointing  out  absolute  beginnings  for  the  aesthetic. 
Just  as  the  "aesthetic  moment"  is  an  essential,  though  often  overlooked, 
phase  of  every  thinking  process  in  the  individual,  so  it  is  present  in  embryo 
in  every  stage  of  social  evolution.  The  problem  is  rather :  Given  the  most 
obscure  and  least  differentiated  form  of  the  aesthetic,  what  conditions  con- 
trol its  emergence  into  an  unmistakable  and  unambiguous  type  of  experi- 
ence? That  is  the  only  formulation  of  any  problem  of  origin  that  can 
hope  to  escape  shipwreck  in  hopeless  paradox. 

A  useful  distinction  to  keep  in  mind  at  this  point  is  the  distinction  made 
by  Baldwin  between  the  stages  of  evolution  in  the  biologic  or  animal  series, 
culminating  in  the  appearance  of  mind,  and  the  stages  of  evolution  in  the 
social  or  cultural  series  that  the  human  race  has  gone  through  since  the 
appearance  of  mind.^  In  showing  the  intimate  relations  of  the  two,  he 
points  out  that  biologic  evolution  in  the  case  of  man  represents  a  practically 
completed  series,  and  is  correspondingly  stable,  serving  as  a  basis  for  the 
operations  of  mind  in  the  social  series,  and  modified  or  suppressed  by  it  only 
within  pretty  definite  limits.  My  object  in  calling  attention  to  the  distinction 
is  to  remind  us  that,  although  the  aesthetic  experience  is  psychological,  and 
its  origins  are  accordingly  to  be  traced  in  the  social  series,  yet  it  presupposes 
and  makes  use  of  the  infinitely  longer  biologic  series.  Our  physical  organ- 
ism in  its  essential  aspects  is  an  inheritance  from  remote  prehuman  ancestors 
and  represents  the  accumulations  and  adjustments  of  so  vast  a  history  that 
I  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  pp.  189-95. 


48  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

even  modern  evolutionary  biology  can  tell  us  of  its  stages  in  the  most  sche- 
matic and  imperfect  way.  Our  whole  bodily  mechanism,  accordingly,  has 
the  cohesion  and  persistence  that  come  from  long  and  satisfactory  adapta- 
tions. It  is  a  bundle  of  peculiarly  settled  and  ingrained  physiological 
habits,  co-ordinated  ways  of  doing  things  that  may  normally  be  counted 
on  to  look  out  for  themselves.  The  extent  of  their  mutual  reinforcement 
and  interdependence  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  they  all  manifest  periodicity 
or  rhythm,  the  only  type  of  action  in  which  stimulus  and  response  are 
reciprocal.  It  is  on  the  basis  and  with  the  help  of  these  co-ordinated 
physiological  rhythms — of  breathing,  circulation,  or  the  more  minute 
anabolic  and  katabolic  processes  in  cell-substance — that  all  our  distinc- 
tively mental  activities  are  built.  No  matter  how  elaborate  or  how  "lofty" 
the  pursuit  in  which  we  are  engaged,  it  involves  throughout  accommodations 
of  the  organism.  A  If  it  make  too  heavy  a  demand  upon  organic  processes, 
or  thwart  their  normal  functioning,  strain  and  exhaustion  follow.  In  the 
rare  cases  in  which  higher  and  lower  activities  are  in  full  accord,  in  which 
mental  processes  or  the  bodily  processes  mediating  them  fall  in  with  and  sup- 
plement the  organic  rhythms,  we  have  a  wonderful  sense  of  ease,  expansion 
of  capacity.  And  let  any  of  the  organic  processes  become  seriously  dis- 
turbed, and  all  our  conscious  operations  are  thrown  out  of  gear.  The 
bitter  compulsions  of  hunger,  lassitude,  disease,  and  death  force  us  to  a 
realization  of  the  importance  of  the  organic  series.  Such  a  statement  in 
terms  of  series  suggests  a  false  parallelism,  and  in  general  lays  stress  on  an 
interaction  that  is  the  most  obvious  commonplace  of  daily  life.  But  in. 
discussing  a  specific  type  of  conscious  experience  we  are,  I  think,  in  danger 
of  ignoring  the  participation  of  directly  life-serving  organic  processes. 

Keeping  in  mind,  then,  the  biologic  basis  and  implication  of  all  con- 
scious experience,  let  us  turn  to  the  social  series.  What  man  was  under 
really  primitive  conditions  we  have  no  direct  means  of  knowing,  and  all  our 
reconstructions  of  him  must  be  unverifiable  hypotheses,  based  on  insuffi- 
cient data.  So-called  "primitive  society,"  conceived  largely  on  analogies 
drawn  from  modern  savages,  is  very  far  from  being  truly  primitive.  But, 
by  piecing  together  the  indirect  evidence  from  biology  and  geology  and  the 
meager  traces  of  his  pursuits,  we  can  form  some  dim  picture  of  the  life  of 
early  man. 

The  "kitchen-middens"  along  various  sea-coasts  and  river-courses,  the 
rubbish  in  certain  caves,  point  to  a  time  when  he  subsisted  on  shell-fish 
and  roots,  not  daring  to  venture  back  into  the  forests  for  fear  of  wild  beasts. 
Such  an  existence  antedates  the  invention  of  the  rudest  rough-stone  weap- 
on, the  simplest  snare.     Consciousness  under  such  conditions  must  have 


SOCIAL   ASPECTS   OF   THE   AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE  49 

been  chiefly  auxiliary  to  food-getting;  and  since  the  collection  of  mussels, 
snails,  berries,  seeds,  and  roots  are  processes  involving  slight  need  of  inge- 
nuity or  skill,  the  type  of  consciousness  sufficient  for  these  employments  must 
have  been  vague,  diffused,  specialized  only  to  the  extent  of  a  few  simple  habits 
on  a  direct  instinctive  basis.  It  undoubtedly  showed  variations,  but  on 
the  whole  it  displayed  a  minimum  of  focalization,  a  maximum  of  "sleepy" 
or  dispersed  attention.  People  restricted  to  this  sort  of  food-supply  and 
approximating  this  mental  apathy  have  been  encountered  in  barren 
parts  of  Australia.^  James  describes  this  "scattered  condition  of  mind" 
as  common  to  us  all  at  times,  and  as  probably  usual  with  animals.  It  is  ex- 
perienced in  partial  anaesthesia,  in  somnolence,  in  various  hypnotic  states.* 
It  is  therefore  not  inconceivable  that  it  was  once  the  prevailing  and  not  the 
exceptional  type  of  mental  life.  Moreover,  in  such  a  life,  where  the  definite 
reactions  were  limited  to  a  few  serial  processes,  connected  with  food-getting, 
there  was  little  opportunity  for  reconstruction  of  a  situation.  Sudden 
emergencies,  such  as  attack  or  failure  of  food-supply,  were  more  likely 
to  result  in  elimination  of  the  individual  than  in  his  meeting  them  resource- 
fully, in  his  making  a  change  in  habitat  or  in  the  nature  of  his  food.  Indif- 
ference, inattention,  a  shrinking  from  stimuli,  were  his  greatest  safeguards. 
In  physical  strength  and  agility  man  was  inferior  to  many  contemporary 
animals.  He  was  powerless  in  the  face  of  many  forces  of  the  natural  world. 
If  he  escaped  them,  it  was  by  virtue  of  hiding  or  running  away,  not  by 
challenging  or  attacking.  Our  temporary  helplessness  in  the  face  of  sudden 
and  imperfectly  grasped  danger,  the  weakening  and  loosening  of  muscular 
tensions  that  accompany  even  the  tendency  to  flight,  are  indisputable 
signs  of  the  primordial  character  of  negative  response  to  a  stimulus  which 
the  organism  has  no  means  of  defining  and  using  positively.  Such  a  mode 
of  response,  of  course,  goes  far  back  of  man  in  the  biologic  series,  and 
never  exists  in  isolation  from  more  positive  forms  of  reaction,  but  it  was 
reinforced  by  the  conditions  of  early  human  life.  There  is  perhaps  danger 
of  exaggerating  the  bewildered  helplessness  of  primitive  man.  He  had  the 
animal  equipment  of  instinct.  Yet  it  has  been  pointed  out  that  in  one 
sense  dawning  mind  must  have  acted  immediately  as  a  disadvantage  by 
checking  the  hair-trigger  operation  of  instinct,  though  the  appearance  of 
mind  means  that  instincts  had  become  antagonistic  or  ambiguous;  and 
consciousness  very  probably  emerged  as  a  compensation  for  what  man  had 
lost  physically  in  assuming  the  erect  posture. 

1  W.  Howitt,  History  0}  Discovery  in  Australia  (quoting  account  of   Dampier, 
1688),  Vol.  I,  pp.  67,  68. 

2  Principles  0}  Psychology,  Vol.  I,  pp.  404,  405. 


50  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

Just  how  long,  and  with  what  variations  this  rudimentary  group-life  and 
rudimentary  consciousness  persisted  is  both  futile  and  irrelevant  to  ask. 
Some  such  low  form  of  social  and  mental  organization  must  be  postulated 
as  preceding  the  hunting  and  warlike  types  of  society  and  patterns  of  mind. 
Sociologists  are  emphasizing  today  more  than  they  did  a  few  years  ago  the 
assumption  of  a  long,  non-predatory,  sub-miUtant,  relatively  pacific  and 
sedentary  period,  in  which  human  association  took  definite  form,  and  which 
prepared  for  later  oppositions  and  more  highly  organized  social  types.  What 
I  wish  to  point  out  is  that  in  this  protoplasmic  kind  of  social  life,  limited 
to  performing  a  few  simple  serial  acts  hardly  differentiated  into  occupations, 
the  aesthetic  moment  is  barely  discernible  to  analysis,  and  certainly  not  a 
part  of  conscious  experience  beyond  giving  a  faint  toning  to  processes 
chiefly  biological.  Mental  life  was  too  fluid  and  shifting  an  accompani- 
ment to  detach  itself  from  the  total  experience ;  and  the  total  experience  was 
meager  in  discriminations,  and  directed  toward  a  relatively  fixed  end.  In 
other  words,  these  activities  were  mostly  narrow  habits,  functioning  in 
practical  independence  of  one  another  and  verging  more  or  less  toward  the 
automatic.  Failure  in  their  operation,  of  course,  aroused  emotional  dis- 
turbance, as  does  all  checking  of  activities  immediately  furthering  biologic 
processes;  but  the  outcome  was  more  likely  to  be  prostration  than  stimula- 
tion to  more  efficient  control.  Attention  was  not  sufficiently  focused  to 
direct  any  such  cluster  of  activities  as  would  have  given  rise  to  aesthetic 
satisfaction  and  to  even  the  rudest  "work  of  art." 

In  thinking  of  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  working  of  the  law  of 
survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  social  series,  we  too  readily  think  of  their  opera- 
tion as  uniform,  at  least  in  the  earlier  stages  of  social  development.  But 
the  geologists  and  the  biologists  have  made  it  clear  that  there  are  times  of 
violent  change  and  times  of  comparative  stability  in  the  course  of  organic 
evolution,  and  the  sociologists  and  the  anthropologists  tell  us  that  the  same 
thing  holds  true  in  the  evolution  of  society.  We  find  what  may  conveni- 
ently be  called  static  and  dynamic  periods,  so  long  as  we  keep  in  mind  that 
the  terms  indicate  merely  different  degrees  of  variation  and  development. 
Moreover,  it  is  necessary  to  remember  also  that  all  division  of  social  prog- 
ress into  types  or  stages  is  schematic  and  methodological,  not  descriptive. 
In  reality,  there  have  been  all  sorts  of  overlappings  and  survivals.  We  see 
this  clearly  in  society  today,  and  now  as  in  every  period  the  coexistence  of 
different  levels  of  culture  produces,  as  it  has  produced,  new  dislocations  and 
demands  for  readjustment. 

With  these  qualifications,  we  may  say  that  the  truly  primitive  period  in 
human  society  was  a  static  period.     Its  gains  were  slow ;  its  achievements 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  5 1 

more  in  the  line  of  conserving  and  maintaining  the  existing  level  than  in 
lifting  to  a  higher  level. 

But  with  changing  conditions,  either  sudden  or  through  slow  accumula- 
tions, came  variations  important  enough  to  be  perpetuated.  Imagination 
can  divine  the  transition  from  the  sluggish  and  inchoate  primitive  stage  to 
the  active  hunting  stage.  How  man  overcame  his  fear  of  wild  beasts, 
forests,  and  darkness  we  cannot  know.  But  even  avoiding  the  larger  and 
more  dangerous  beasts  must  have  made  him  familiar  with  their  habits,  and 
the  capture  of  small,  defenseless  beasts  have  led,  through  a  series  of  acci- 
dents and  tentative  advances,  to  the  use  of  natural  missiles  and  to  the  inven- 
tion by  some  prehistoric  Watts  or  Edison  of  the  first  rude  club  or  spear  or 
trap.  Armed  with  these  and  with  that  other  great  invention,  a  mode  of 
producing  fire  artificially,  man  began  his  long  warfare  with  other  forms  of 
life  and  with  the  material  world,  in  the  course  of  which  he  has  molded  them 
no  less  than  they  have  developed  him. 

With  the  emergence  of  the  hunting  period  man's  attitude  toward  his 
stimuli  was  no  longer  predominantly  habitual  and  negative.  It  became 
increasingly  active,  positive,  constructive.  His  food-supply  grew  more 
plentiful  and  at  the  same  time  more  uncertain,  since  game  cannot  be 
counted  on  as  can  plant  life  and  lower  animal  forms,  such  as  moUusks, 
snails,  grubs.  But  its  pursuit  drew  upon  and  developed  a  far  wider  range 
of  aptitudes,  and  necessitated  a  very  different  mental  pattern.  He  became 
wary,  alert,  resourceful,  so  far  as  concerned  the  killing  of  animals  for  food. 
He  was,  moreover,  farther  removed  from  the  pinch  of  actual  starvation; 
for,  if  game  failed,  he  could  fall  back  on  his  old  vegetable  diet,  which, 
indeed,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  he  ever  entirely  gave  up.  But  interest 
and  attention  shifted  to  the  new  food-supply.  In  the  hunt  attention  was 
keen,  every  sense  was  temporarily  on  the  alert.  And  since  food-getting  was 
a  group  affair,  and  many  men  were  needed  in  the  tracking  and  surrounding 
of  the  larger  and  fiercer  animals,  social  co-operation  became  a  much  more 
specific  and  mentally  intense  thing  than  ever  before.  The  forms  of  co-oper- 
ation in  hunting  vary  enormously  from  sporadic  efforts  on  the  part  of  some 
Australian  groups  to  the  closely  knit  hunting-pattern  society  of  the  Iroquois. 
But  the  almost  universal  distribution  of  the  totemic  system,  the  greater 
number  of  animal  totems,  with  the  wide  ramifications  of  their  influence 
upon  social  structure,  show  to  what  an  extent  the  occupation  of  hunting 
affected  the  life  of  "natural  peoples." 

Out  of  this  closer  and  more  distinctive  social  organization,  and  the  in- 
crease in  mental  and  bodily  vigor  due  to  more  abundant  food  and  to  the 
mobile  hunter  life,  arose  new  occasions  for  conflict.     Groups  of  men  came 


52  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

into  collision  over  hunting  areas,  the  spoils  of  the  chase,  and  so  on.  And 
out  of  feuds  between  groups  grew  the  necessity  for  the  chief  and  other 
differentiations  in  group  control,  leading  to  the  definitely  militant  type  of 
society. 

On  the  industrial  side,  the  hunting  period  introduced  the  first  marked 
division  of  labor,  that  running  along  the  line  of  sex.  The  primitive  pre- 
eminence, or  at  least  equality,  of  woman  as  a  provider  of  food — a  task  for 
which  she  was  well  equipped  so  long  as  food-getting  meant  collecting  nuts 
and  seeds,  scraping  rocks,  and  digging  for  roots — gave  way  before  the 
superior  equipment  of  man  for  long  and  arduous  hunting  expeditions. 
But,  although  shut  out  from  the  excitements  of  the  new  pursuit,  she  still 
carried  on  the  routine  activities  involved  in  the  preparation  of  the  new  food, 
as  well  as  retaining  her  old  task  of  collecting  vegetable  food.  From  this 
delegation  to  woman  of  serial  and  routine  processes,  she  became  practically 
the  primitive  manufacturer,  tanning  the  skins  of  animals  for  garments, 
making  baskets,  grinding  seeds,  and,  later,  weaving  and  making  pottery. 
To  her,  too,  are  credited  the  beginnings  of  agriculture  and  the  domesti- 
cation of  animals.  It  may  be  said  that  she  carried  on  the  intermediary 
processes,  while  man  reserved  to  himself  those  involving  high  stimulations 
and  satisfactions.  It  is  also  true  that,  through  her  control  of  the  making 
of  complex  objects,  woman  was  probably,  to  a  large  extent,  the  primi- 
tive artist.  Here,  too,  it  is  necessary  to  guard  against  thinking  that  the 
specialization  was  in  any  sense  rigid. 

Man,  for  his  part,  under  the  brisk  stimulations  of  hunting  life,  won  some 
of  the  most  notable  gains  in  human  history.  He  devised  the  snare,  the 
spear,  the  knife,  the  bow  and  arrow.  His  attitude  toward  his  weapons  is 
significant  of  his  heightened  sense  of  personality,  or,  to  put  it  more  accurately, 
of  himself  as  an  agency.  These  weapons,  the  trophies  of  the  chase,) such 
as  claws,  skins,  horns,  which  he  displays  on  his  body,  even  the  carcass  of 
the  slain  animal,  are  to  his  mind  not  things,)  not  mere  instruments  or 
products,  but  extensions  of  himself,  united  to  him  by  a  very  real  bond.  In 
all  stages  of  the  hunting  era,  and  among  modern  peoples  at  this  level,  we 
find  this  same  feeling.  Weapons,  trophies,  ornaments,  clothes,  any  thing 
intimately  connected  with  the  individual  at  times  of  emotional  excitation, 
are  thought  of,  not  as  property,  but  as  direct  participants  in  the  situation  of 
which  their  owner  is  the  center. 

The  hunting  type  of  social  situation,  then,  whenever  and  wherever  it 
appears,  is  a  period  of  active  performance,  and  involves  a  far  greater 
degree  of  social  movement  and  control  than  is  found  in  the  rudimentary 
social  situation  out  of  which  it  arises.     On  the  other  hand,  the  hunting 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  53 

type  of  society  and  the  hunting  pattern  of  mind  operate  within  narrow 
limits  and  are  marked  by  extreme  alternations  of  control  and  lack  of  control, 
of  effort  and  relaxation,  of  concentration  and  dispersion  of  attention.  After 
the  strain  and  excitement  of  stalking  the  quarry,  the  cunning  restraint 
necessary  to  insure  its  capture,  the  jubilation  of  success,  comes  the  reaction 
due  to  excessive  fatigue  and  indulgence.  The  process  as  a  whole  involves 
extravagant  waste  of  energy  and  exhaustion,  leading  frequently  to  stupor. 

Forethought,  acute  for  the  immediate,  problematic  situation,  does  not 
extend  beyond  it,  has  not  been  generalized  so  as  to  apply  to  other  situations. 
The  reason  for  this  lies  largely  in  the  nature  of  the  difficulties  met  and 
mastered  in  the  hunting  stage.  They  are  irregularly  recurrent,  but  the 
outcome  is  in  each  case  uncertain,  and  the  means  of  achieving  the  end  are 
precarious.  Conditions  can  be  only  roughly  determined  in  advance;  con- 
trol is  only  partial  and  spasmodic.  Men  cannot  deal  with  one  crisis,  and 
win  from  it  a  broad  basis  of  advantage  for  dealing  with  the  next.  Each 
presents  itself  in  as  acute  a  form  as  the  one  before  it.  Such  experience 
stamps  in  the  anticipatory,  restlessly  active,  explosive  type  of  consciousness. 
It  is  essentially  the  gambling,  speculating,  dare-devil  temper  of  mind. 
As  an  attitude,  it  is  a  part  of  our  racial  inheritance.  If  owe  first  impulse  is 
to  shrink  from  a  threatening  object,  our  second  is  to  grapple  with  it,  to 
overcome  its  recalcitrancy  to  our  purposes.  But  such  a  mental  attitude 
lacks  steadiness;  it  dissipates  energy  and  squanders  its  emotional  accumu- 
lations, which  are,  moreover,  violent,  fluctuating,  and  accordingly  exciting 
rather  than  pleasurable.     Fatigue  and  prostration  follow  overstimulation. 

To  the  savage  stalking  his  prey  or  ambushing  his  enemy  suspense  and 
strain  last  to  the  moment  of  achievement,  and  then  discharge  in  violent 
manifestations  of  satisfaction.  Hunter  or  warrior  drags  home  his  spoils 
and  his  victims,  animal  or  human;  he  shouts  and  capers  as  do  the  rest  of 
the  group.  To  the  savage  mind  there  is  probably  no  clear  distinction  between 
victors,  prey,  and  shouting  throng.  They  are  all  part  of  one  intensely  active 
and  highly  emotional  situation.  Modern  psychology,  whether  of  the  crowd 
or  of  the  individual,  tells  us  that  emotion  stands  for  an  undifferentiated 
continuum;  thought,  for  discrimination.^  The  savage  has  not  reached  the 
stage  where  he  can  abstract  a  mental  state  from  the  total  activity.  Pain 
and  pleasure  alike,  and  the  complexer  forms  of  affective  experience  that 
we  call  emotions,  still  inhere  in  the  concrete  experience. 

It  is  not  without  reason,  then,  that  inquirers  into  the  racial  origins  of 
art  find  its  beginnings  in  the  "festal  throng,"  the  group  in  the  sway  of  high 
excitement.     Such  situations  are  typical  of  the  predatory  phase  of  social 

I  Gordon,  Psychology  of  Meaning,  pp.  62,  63. 


54  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

development,  and  contain  the  germs  of  the  dance,  song,  and  drama,  which 
are  found  to  be  the  rudimentary  art-forms  of  hunting  peoples.  Gummere 
cites  a  mass  of  survival  material  pointing  to  this  in  the  folk-literature  and 
customs  of  European  peasants ;  and  he  and  others  have  collected  still  more 
abundant  evidence  from  modern  savages.     He  says: 

The  earliest  form  of  the  drama  consists  mainly  of  action  and  gesture  in  the 
dance,  so  as  to  repeat  a  contemporary  event  of  communal  interest — war  and  the 
chase,  or,  with  farming  folk,  and  more  in  reminiscence,  the  doings  of  seed-time 
and  harvest;  it  is  clear  that  the  rude  songs  and  shouts  that  went  with  step  and 
gesture  and  mimicry  must  have  been  improvised.' 

Him  says: 

If  we  use  the  word  in  its  widest  sense,  so  as  to  include  every  representation  by 
action,  drama  can  be  spoken  of  as  the  very  earliest  of  all  the  imitative  arts  .... 
As  an  outward  sign  of  thought  action  is  more  immediate  than  words.    Dramatic 
communication  does  not  even  presuppose  any  conscious  intention  nor  any  common 
consent.* 

Any  attempt  to  revive  the  original  emotional  experience  with  its  trium- 
phant culmination  must  be  called  a  work  of  art,  whatever  be  the  motive 
that  led  to  it.  This  motive  is  not  aesthetic  in  our  sense  until  late  in  the  his- 
tory of  social  development.  It  is  practical  in  a  vague,  unformulated  way — 
to  serve  as  stimulus  to  new  achievements  in  hunting  or  warfare,  to  act  as 
"sympathetic  magic"  in  procuring  a  fresh  supply  of  game  or  fresh  conquest 
of  foes,  to  convey  the  experience  to  younger  members  of  the  group  who  did 
not  participate  in  it;  later  it  may  become  purely  ritualistic  and  stereotyped. 
But  its  object  is  always  the  reinstatement  of  a  situation  involving  successful 
control,  and  complicated  and  diversified  enough  to  be  suffused  with  emotion. 
In  the  course  of  reinstatement,  the  situation  inevitably  becomes  abbreviated, 
more  or  less  symbolic,  accompanied  by  less  waste  and  fatigue.  The  original 
wild  and  random  leaping  and  shouting  grow  more  rhythmical,  and  take  on 
the  form  of  rude  dance  and  song;  the  movements  and  gestures  of  stalking, 
capturing,  etc.,  gather  around  certain  episodes,  and  become  dramatic  pan- 
tomime. But  wherever  we  find  such  representations — and  they  are  univer- 
sal among  hunting  peoples — we  find  that  they  deal  with  the  dominant,  life- 
maintaining  activities  of  the  group;  are  essentially  social  or  communal  in 
character,  heightening  the  sense  of  group  homogeneity  through  reviving  and 
communicating  the  emotions  of  satisfaction  and  control  of  a  specific  situa- 
tion. We  can  conjecture,  moreover,  that  at  a  time  when  mental  construc- 
tions were  still  wavering,  and  memory  of  the  past  was  only  just  emerging  as 

I  Beginnthgs  of  Poetry,  p.  428. 

'  Origins  0}  Art,  p.  150. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  55 

a  means  of  controlling  the  future,  it  may  have  been  necessary  to  stir  up  the 
whole  emotional  and  activity  matrix  of  an  idea  in  order  to  get  any  sort  of 
grip  on  it  as  a  tool  for  further  use.  This  is  what  James  calls  "total  recall." 
So  that  both  socially  and  psychologically  such  revivals  or  reconstructions  of 
a  situation  would  be  of  direct  survival  value  for  the  people  practicing  them, 
and  would  in  themselves  lead  indirectly  to  new  forms  of  control. 

The  elaborate  and  complicated  group  ceremonies  that  we  find  among 
modem  hunting  peoples,  such  as  the  Australians  and  the  North  American 
Indian  tribes,  have  undoubtedly  hardened  into  their  present  form  through 
immemorial  use,  and  are  to  a  considerable  extent  purely  ceremonial  and 
ritualistic.  But  they  reveal  the  characteristics  that  I  have  mentioned. 
The  interminable  and  detailed  initiation  ceremonies  of  the  central  Aus- 
tralian tribes,  described  with  such  scientific  accuracy  by  Messrs.  Spencer 
and  Gillen,  have  for  their  obvious  purpose  the  incorporation  of  the  young 
men  into  the  group,  and  the  stamping  upon  them  of  its  traditions  and  modes 
of  action;  but  this  is  accomplished  by  means  of  dramatic  representations 
of  incidents  involving  the  various  totem  animals  of  the  group  and  the  group 
ancestors,  themselves  akin  to  the  totems,  and  by  group  dancing  and  sing- 
ing. Conventional  as  many  of  these  performances  are,  they  nevertheless 
tend  to  stir  up  in  the  minds  of  the  youths,  and  to  some  degree  in  the  minds 
of  the  whole  group,  the  tensions  and  relaxations,  excitements  and  satis- 
factions, that  accompanied  the  original  occurrence. 

A  curious  fact  among  the  central  Australians,  which  has,  so  far  as  I  know, 
not  been  satisfactorily  explained,  is  that,  though  their  sense  of  private  prop- 
erty is  very  imperfectly  developed  and  extends  otherwise  only  to  articles  of 
clothing  and  of  personal  use,  which  are  thought  of  as  immediate  extensions 
of  the  individual  himself,  partaking  of  his  own  nature,  yet  there  is  private 
and  even  inherited  ownership  of  songs  and  dramatic  ceremonies.  Those 
relating  to  each  totem  group  belong  to  certain  men  of  that  group,  who  have 
the  right  of  choosing  who  shall  perform  them,  and  even  of  giving  them  away 
as  a  mark  of  special  favor.''  I  know  of  no  other  kind  of  property  among 
them  regarding  which  the  rights  of  individuals  are  clearly  recognized.  It 
would  be  worth  while  inquiring  whether  this  fact  has  been  taken  into  account 
in  any  of  the  theories  of  the  origin  of  property.  From  our  point  of  view 
it  is  suggestive  as  showing  how  the  work  of  art  has  contributed  to  the 
heightening  of  the  sense  of  individuality  and  personality,  as  well  as  rein- 
forcing the  feeling  of  social  integrity. 

It  used  to  be  commented  on  as  paradoxical  and  inexplicable  that  the 

I  Spencer  and  Gillen,  Native  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  pp.  311,  312,  chaps^ 
iii-ix,  passim. 


^1 


56  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

graphic  or  representative  art  of  the  prehistoric  European  peoples  of  the 
hunting  period,  the  men  of  the  "rough-stone  age,"  should  be  so  much  more 
realistic  and  spirited,  show  so  much  more  artistic  skill,  than  the  same  class 
of  works  of  art  among  peoples  in  the  pastoral  and  agricultural  stages,  farther 
advanced  along  the  paths  of  civilization.  The  difficulty  lies  in  part  in  a 
failure  to  discriminate  between  art  as  representation  and  art  as  decoration 
or  design.  The  famous  etchings  of  animals  on  the  bits  of  mammoth 
tusk  and  reindeer  horn  found  in  the  caverns  of  Dordogne,  above  all, 
the  famous  dagger  from  the  same  source  with  the  carved  handle 
representing  a  springing  reindeer,  are  undoubtedly  vastly  superior  as 
naturalistic  representations  to  the  stiff  and  uncouth  figures  dating  from  the 
"smooth-stone "  or  the  early  metal  periods.  But  the  apparent  retrogression 
is  easily  explained  on  a  basis  of  occupational  attention.  The  animals  por- 
trayed with  such  fidelity  and  vigor  on  the  fragments  in  the  rubbish  heaps 
of  the  cave-men  represent  the  dominant  and  absorbing  occupation  of  men 
during  the  hunting  period  in  Europe.  These  animals  were  the  focus  point 
of  the  struggle  for  existence;  they  stood  for  the  most  violent  and  effectual 
reactions  of  the  men  who  pursued  and  killed  them.  In  other  words,  cer- 
tain dangerous  animals  were  the  cave-men's  most  fully  and  solidly  con- 
structed objects,  and  were  known  with  an  intimacy  belonging  only  to  objects 
that  thus  sum  up  and  exhaust  the  life-maintaining  activities  of  an  entire 
precarious  situation.  Etchings  or  carvings  of  them  summed  up  and  revived 
the  whole  bundle  of  reactions  involved,  symbolized  a  complicated  process 
of  control.^  What  purpose  was  in  the  minds  of  their  makers  we  cannot 
say.  As  I  have  already  suggested,  different  motives  were  probably  at 
work  at  different  times,  or  dimly  recognized  at  the  same  time — of  magic, 
communication,  recall,  incentive.  Reinstatement,  symbolization,  of  the 
experience  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  the  emotional  satisfactions  involved, 
would  be  of  necessity  a  secondary  motive,  and  to  my  mind  one  of  slow 
growth.  It  means  a  far  higher  degree  of  abstraction  from  the  active 
situation  than  the  hunting  type  of  mind  has  reached.  And  the  suggestion 
that  primitive  works  of  art  derive  from  "primeval  man's  weariness  of 
inactivity  in  the  periods  when  food  was  plentiful  and  life  luxurious,"' 
that  they  are  a  sort  of  substitutional  exercise  of  habits  built  up  in  the  hunt, 
bases  the  aesthetic,  to  my  mind,  on  a  subordinate,  if  not  negligible, 
motive.     It  is  practically  Spencer's  theory  of  play  and  art  as  due  to  the 

I  Cf.  Baldwin  Brown,  The  Fine  Arts  (revised  English  edition,  1902),  pp.  27-30; 
E.  Grosse,  Beginnings  of  Art,  pp.  163-65,  198,  199. 

»  A.  E.  Tanner,  "Association  of  Ideas,"  University  of  Chicago  Contributions  to 
Philosophy,  Vol.  II,  No.  3,  pp.  59,  60. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE   AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE  57 

useless  discharge  of  surplus  energy.  And  on  the  social  side  it  makes  art 
a  product  of  mere  leisure.  The  positive  element  in  this  view,  and  at  the 
same  time  its  inadequacy,  I  shall  touch  upon  later. 

With  the  growth  of  the  pastoral  and  agricultural  forms  of  life  matters 
changed.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  predatory  attitudes  and  aptitudes 
disappeared  altogether,  or  that  the  later  occupational  stages  are  to  be 
assigned  to  clearly  marked  periods  or  to  a  uniform  order  of  appearance 
among  all  peoples.  Environmental  conditions  and  resources  bring  about 
vast  differences  in  the  careers  of  different  peoples.  The  Australians  on 
their  treeless  and  arid  plains  were  doomed  to  arrest,  just  as  the  peoples 
of  temperate,  well-watered,  and  well-wooded  Europe  were  spurred  to  prog- 
ress. But  with  domestic  animals  and  planted  crops  experience  became 
broader  and  more  stable.  Crises  directly  threatening  life  were  far  less 
frequent.  A  situation  once  under  control  was  not  likely  to  recur  in  an 
acutely  problematic  form,  but  served  as  a  basis  for  fvirther  activities  of  an 
intermediate  instead  of  a  directly  life-maintaining  character.  Food-getting 
operations  were  no  longer  irregular  and  violent,  requiring  exhausting  expend- 
iture of  emotional  and  physical  energy  and  leaving  no  margin  for  the  build- 
ing-up of  other  useful  types  of  conduct.  Life  gained  in  breadth  and  in 
security  at  the  expense  of  emotional  intensity;  it  utilized  and  husbanded 
bodily  activities  that  had  hitherto  been  wasted  and  exhausted  in  a  narrow 
circle  of  pursuits.  While  both  the  tending  of  herds  and  the  cultivation  of 
plants  involved  uncertainties  and  difficulties,  they  were  uncertainties  and 
difficulties  that  were  to  a  considerable  extent  regularly  recurrent,  and  could 
therefore  be  planned  for  and  discounted  in  advance.  With  the  develop- 
ment of  these  occupations  forethought  and  memory  were  strengthened; 
regular  habits  were  set  up  along  numerous  lines;  group  custom  became  a 
stronger  social  bond.  The  pastoral  life,  more  or  less  nomadic  in  form, 
undoubtedly  retained  more  precarious  situations  than  did  the  agricultural. 
Occupations  having  to  do  with  animal  life  are  fuller  of  problems  and  crises 
than  those  having  to  do  with  plants.  But  animals  under  domestication  are 
animals  under  control.  They  secure,  and  at  the  same  time  alter  the  nature 
of  the  animal  food-supply.  Pastoral  peoples  rarely  kill  their  herd-animals 
for  food,  except  in  connection  with  tribal  ceremonies,  developing  into  sacri- 
fice; but  they  depend  on  them  largely  for  milk  and  cheese.  This  gives  rise 
to  a  set  of  industries  of  the  manufacturing  or  mediate  type.  Animals  also 
furnish  materials  for  tents  and  for  clothing,  and  so  become  the  center  of  the 
weaving  industry,  with  its  varied  interrelated  processes.  Domestic  animals 
likewise  give  a  powerful  impetus  to  intercoiu-se  with  other  social  groups. 
This  intercourse  is  partly  hostile,  partly  peaceful.     While  pastoral  Ufej  leads 


$8  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

to  disputes  about  grazing  grounds,  to  raiding  and  driving  off  the  flocks  of 
adjacent  groups,  it  at  the  same  time  strengthens  the  sense  of  property,  per- 
haps first  developing  the  notion  of  ownership  of  land ;  and  it  offers  the  first 
real  opportunity  for  the  beginnings  of  trade.  Cattle,  as  most  languages 
reveal,  were  the  first  important  medium  of  exchange. 

With  the  development  of  agriculture  men  had  chiefly  to  reckon  with 
the  vicissitudes  and  difficulties  of  climate,  weather,  and  soil.  The  cycle 
of  the  seasons  determined  their  main  activities.  Even  more  than  in  pastoral 
life,  the  events  on  which  their  interests  and  attention  were  centered  were 
recurrent,  rhythmical.  The  controUing  influence  of  the  seasonal  or  "cosmu- 
logical"  rhythms  is  seen  wherever  agriculture  is  the  principal  occupation  of 
a  people.  The  customs,  beliefs,  and  folk-lore  of  agricultural  peoples  aU  over 
the  world,  conspicuously  among  Europeans,  who  have  been  most  closely 
studied,  cluster  about  planting,  cultivating,  harvesting,  storing  grain,  the 
olive,  the  vine.  The  whole  festival  and  ceremonial  life  centers  at  these 
points.  Furthermore,  in  agriculture  the  number  of  intermediate  steps 
between  planting  and  the  final  utilization  of  the  product  as  food  is  very 
great.  These  stages  succeed  one  another  slowly,  and  each  demands  bodily 
labor  of  a  simple  and  serial  nature.  Any  such  movements  as  those  involved 
in  sowing,  cutting,  binding,  threshing,  with  repetition  rapidly  become  habit- 
ual— that  is  to  say,  rhythmical — in  character.  All  regular  manual  work 
sets  up  characteristic  bodily  rhythms,  differing  according  to  the  special  form 
of  labor,  but  all  relatively  simple.  In  addition  to  this,  agriculture  demands 
the  co-operation  of  numbers  of  people  in  carrying  out  successfully  some  of 
its  operations.  And  wherever  a  group  of  people  work  together  at  a  rhyth- 
mical bodily  task,  they  tend  to  fall  into  the  same  rhythm.  Working  in 
this  common  rhythm  greatly  facilitates  the  movements  made.  It  increases 
speed;  it  lessens  fatigue.  And  so  the  rhythm  is  accentuated,  is  stressed  by 
beats,  is  accompanied  by  song.  The  effect  of  rhythmical  group-labor 
closely  approximates  the  effect  of  group  festival-dance  and  song.  In 
agricultural  life,  in  fact,  the  two  coalesce;  for  the  agricultural  festival  and 
religious  ceremony  is  made  up  largely  of  dramatic  representation  of  the 
typical  agricultural  processes,  of  communal  dance  in  the  labor-rhythms 
and  songs  on  agricultural  matters;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  these  festal 
performances,  with  their  emotional  accompaniments,  react  into  the  actual 
group-work,  and  give  it  a  festal  and  emotional  character.  Recent  students 
of  social  and  aesthetic  origins  have  emphasized  now  one  of  these  aspects, 
now  the  other.  Biicher's  important  study,  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus,^  traces 
the  origin  of  poetry  and  music  to  concerted  and  rhythmic  labor  and  to  the 

I  Especially  chaps,  ii,  iii,  vii. 


SOCIAL   ASPECTS   OF   THE   AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE  59 

labor-songs  that  arose  in  connection  with  it.  Gummere  dwells  on  the  strong 
communal  spirit  of  work  in  the  fields  and  its  festal  representation.  "An 
agricultural  community,"  he  says,  "whether  in  its  rudest  stage,  a  horde  that 
lives  in  fertile  river  bottoms  as  distinguished  from  the  nomadic,  predatory 
bands  of  the  plains,  or  in  the  civilization  of  feudal  Europe,  always  tends  to 
homogeneous  conditions,  and  always  fosters  communal  song."^  Mannhardt 
in  his  Wald  und  Feldkulte,  Frazer  in  his  Golden  Bough,  and  others  give 
abundant  examples  of  group  drama,  song,  and  dance  arising  out  of  the 
agricultural  pursuits  of  early  Europe.  The  Eleusinian  Mysteries,  for 
example,  and  the  cult  of  Dionysus,  out  of  which  grew  the  Greek  drama, 
are  traced  to  local  rites  attendant  upon  the  cultivation  of  grain  and  the  vine 
respectively,  by  some  even  to  grain  and  grape  totems.  ^  Peasant  customs 
all  over  Europe,  the  "Beltane  fires"  in  May  to  favor  the  growing  crops, 
the  sheaves  of  grain  set  apart  for  ceremonial  observances  at  harvest  and 
known  as  "kern-babies"  or  "maidens,"  all  testify  to  the  prevalence  of  agri- 
cultural festivities  and  rituals.  The  lovely  myth  of  Demeter  and  Perse- 
phone, so  closely  associated  with  the  cult  at  Eleusis,  has  obviously  an  origin 
of  this  kind. 

We  see,  accordingly,  that  the  festival  and  life-maintaining  pursuits 
play  as  great  a  part  among  agricultural  as  among  hunting  peoples,  but  that 
the  direction  and  objects  of  attention  are  dififerent.  Agriculture  necessi- 
tates far  more  stable,  rhythmical,  and  mutually  supplementary  modes  of 
action.  The  basis  of  achievement  is  broader;  there  is  less  waste  of  e£Fort, 
fewer  violent  alternations  of  excitement  and  prostration  accompanying  a 
narrow  range  of  activities.  Emotion  is  more  diffused,  less  concentrated. 
Yet  the  processes  and  interests  of  agriculture  are  too  varied  and  too  closely 
interwoven  to  permit  of  their  becoming  routine,  relieving  them  from  the 
need  of  attention.  Ends  have  to  be  kept  in  mind  and  pursued  with  patience 
and  sagacity;  it  is  only  the  intermediary  and  constituent  processes  that  take 
care  of  themselves  and  by  assuming  the  rhythmic  form  contribute  to  the 
ease  and  pleasant  toning  of  the  whole. 

We  trace  this  rhythmic  character  in  the  whole  group  of  industrial 
activities  not  directly  connected  with  pastoral  or  agricultural  pursuits, 
but  flourishing  on  the  basis  of  physical  well-being  which  they  assure. 
Weaving,  making  of  pottery,  of  weapons  and  tools,  of  permanent  dwellings, 
all  reveal  a  feeling  for  ordered  repetition.  Conventional  pattern,  ornament, 
whether  of  dots,  crosses,  lines,  spirals,  or  their  more  elaborate  combinations, 
show  the  same  rhythmic  interval  that  we  find  in  choral  dance  and  song  at 

1  Beginnings  oj  Poetry,  p.  279;  also  whole  passage,  pp.  279-308. 

2  F.  B.  Jevons,  Introduction  to  the  History  oj  Religion,  Essays  XXIII,  XXIV. 


^ 


60  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

this  Stage  of  development.  It  is  not  accidental  that  conventional  design 
coexists  with  agriculture,  nor  that  such  design  appears  upon  objects  of  com- 
mon use.  As  the  toilers  in  the  fields  found  their  labor  lightened  by  singing 
in  time  to  rhythmic  movements,  so  the  workers  in  clay,  the  women  weaving 
baskets  or  stuffs,  gained  ease  and  pleasure  in  their  work  by  means  of  reiter- 
ated spots  of  color  or  alternating  threads  of  contrasting  dyes.  Such  work, 
though  it  seems  to  us  the  result  of  individual  effort,  was  no  doubt  carried 
on  by  groups  of  women  together,  probably  to  the  accompaniment  of  appro- 
priate song  and  swaying  of  the  body.  Gummere  cites  group-songs  connected 
with  spinning  and  knitting  and  with  grinding  at  the  hand-mill.^  It  is  not 
forcing  an  arbitrary  contrast,  I  think,  to  say  that,  while  the  arts  of  hunting 
and  war  are  chiefly  realistic  and  representational,  the  arts  of  peaceful  rural 
occupations  and  of  industry  are  chiefly  conventional,  the  arts  of  rhythm, 
pattern,  and  design.  The  two  forms  of  life  never  exist  altogether  in  isola- 
tion. With  the  establishment  of  fairly  coherent  and  stable  agricultural 
communities  came  further  division  of  labor,  growing  wealth,  and  with  them 
class  distinctions  and  trade  and  other  rivalries,  both  within  each  community 
and  among  communities,  leading  to  warfare  on  a  larger  and  better  organized 
scale.  As  a  result  of  successful  warfare,  fundamental  industrial  processes 
are  commonly  handed  over  to  subject  populations  or  to  slaves  taken  in  war, 
and  there  arises  that  social  prejudice  against  productive  labor  that  is, 
according  to  Professor  Veblen,  a  conspicuous  mark  of  the  leisure  class 
evolved  in  accordance  with  barbarian  or  predatory  standards  of  culture. ' 
Wherever  we  find  industry  carried  on  only  by  a  class  and  under  social  stigma, 
the  artistic  element  that  we  recognize  in  the  earlier  products  lessens  or  disap- 
pears— a  sign  that  the  work  is  no  longer  done  in  the  old  collective,  rhythmic 
way,  with  a  sense  of  pleasant  mastery  of  materials  and  of  co-operation  with 
the  group.  With  the  loss  of  the  "folk-spirit"  articles  of  common  use  lose 
their  artistic  character. 

In  summing  up  this  brief  attempt  at  a  reconstruction  of  primitive  life 
and  primitive  social  psychology,  we  find  that  in  the  rudest  conceivable 
human  society  there  was  not  sufficient  organization  and  control,  not  enough 
focalizing  of  attention,  to  produce  a  recognizable  aesthetic  experience  or 
work  of  art,  even  of  the  most  rudimentary  type.  Instincts  and  a  few 
narrow  and  serial  habits  kept  consciousness  well  down  toward  the  auto- 
matic type  of  response;  and  beyond  this  mental  life  was  probably  of  the 
character  of  what  we  call  today  the  "fringe" — vague,  diffused,  affective 
rather  than  cognitive  or  volitional.     In  the  hunting  stage,  experience, 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  269-72. 

2  Theory  0}  the  Leisure  Class,  pp.  19-21,  35-43,  and  passim. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  6 1 

although  still  narrow,  became  well  organized  in  the  one  line  of  pursuing 
and  capturing  animals.  Within  the  limits  of  this  particular  cluster  of  acts, 
tension  was  extreme  and  prolonged,  and  resolution  occurred  suddenly  at 
the  moment  of  climax  in  the  killing  of  the  prey.  Here  we  find  some  of 
the  conditions  for  the  emergence  of  the  aesthetic,  a  complex  of  activities 
and  a  high  degree  of  satisfaction  at  the  moment  of  successful  issue.  But 
the  experience  is  painfully  toned,  and  the  satisfaction  is  divided  and 
marred  by  the  fatigue  and  prostration  of  suspense  and  over-violent  action. 
So  the  aesthetic  at  this  stage  is  narrow  and  partial.  The  work  of  art  pro- 
duced in  dramatic  dance  and  song  or  graphic  representation  has  spirit  and 
vigor,  and  undoubtedly  helps  to  develop  a  sense  of  the  aesthetic  in  its  pro- 
ducers ;  but  it  lacks  restraint ;  the  motives  for  its  construction  are  practical, 
and  the  result  is  sometimes  attributed  to  an  external  agency.  In  the  less  pred- 
atory and  more  peaceful  pastoral  and  agricultural  stages,  social  life  becomes 
more  stable  and  more  diversified.  Attention  plays  over  a  broader  range  of 
objects.  Social  consolidation  takes  place  through  a  cycle  of  recurrent  and 
regular  activities.  The  food-supply  becomes  relatively  secure,  and  a  margin 
is  won  for  the  development  of  various  intermediary  occupations.  The 
tilling  of  the  soil  and  the  working-up  of  the  various  products  into  food,  the 
making  of  baskets,  pottery,  tools,  and  weapons,  the  weaving  of  cloth,  the 
working  of  metals,  bring  together  a  host  of  activities  hitherto  exercised  more 
or  less  in  isolation,  and  arouse  and  confirm  a  sense  of  successful  attainment. 
In  such  work  the  values  of  the  different  stages  for  the  most  part  survive  and 
become  incorporated  into  the  effect  of  the  whole.  So  that,  wherever  we  find 
considerable  elaboration  in  the  ordinary  occupations  of  a  people,  there  we 
find  distinct  art  products,  stirring  the  sense  of  completeness  and  control 
that  we  have  called  aesthetic,  and  helping  to  foster  this  sense  and  to  reveal 
it  to  reflection. 

This  does  not  imply  as  yet,  however,  a  distinct  class  of  men  recognized 

as  artists  or  the  work  of  art  produced  for  its  own  sake,  apart  from  the 

practical  demand  that  it  meets,  the  practical  part  that  it  plays.     The  dis- 

N   tinction  between  the  useful  and  the  beautiful,  in  any  rigid  sense,  is,  indeed, 

■^     a  modern  distinction,  and  does  not  go  back  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

It  is  often  said  nowadays,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  that  art  is  the 
product  of  a  pretty  wide  economic  margin,  with  its  accompanying  leisure; 
■5 1  and,  so  far  as  this  goes — which  is  not  very  far — it  is  perfectly  true.  Where 
the  struggle  for  mere  subsistence  is  pressing,  or  the  menace  of  hostile  forces 
is  always  dominant,  there  is  no  chance  for  that  co-operation  among  activi- 
ties which  is  an  essential  requirement  for  the  dawning  of  the  aesthetic  ex- 
perience.    Crises  are  frequent,  narrow  in  range,  but  acute.    Problems  are 


62  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

solved  serially.  There  is  slight  accumulation  of  stable  and  successful  adjust- 
ments. Professor  William  I.  Thomas,  in  a  criticism  of  Spencer's  derivation 
of  the  artist  class — as  of  all  other  professional  classes — from  the  medicine- 
man and  the  priest,  whom  Spencer  practically  identifies,  although  there  is 
serious  objection  to  such  a  view,  points  out,  with  justice,  that  the  best  recent 
evidence  indicates  that  the  artist  class  is  not  the  outgrowth  of  any  partic- 
ular occupation — is,  accordingly,  not  primarily  and  exclusively  religious  and 
ceremonial  in  its  origin,  but  arises  wherever  there  is  security  and  leisure, 
and  therefore  chiefly  under  the  shadow  of  court  patronage,  or  at  least  under 
the  protection  of  some  powerful  and  affluent  person.^  It  is  well  to  recognize 
this  fact  as  an  important  condition,  and  one  that  has  been  commonly  over- 
looked; but,  taken  by  itself,  it  is  too  much  like  making  the  artist  a  mere 
"hanger-on"  of  society,  a  member  of  the  equivocal  or  exploiting  classes, 
and  therefore  akin  to  the  criminal.  Such  a  view  is,  of  course,  popular  in 
certain  quarters.  The  grounding  of  art  upon  leisure  is  sometimes  stretched 
to  the  point  of  making  it  a  product  altogether  of  superfluity  and  idleness, 
and  leads  to  exaggerated  insistence  upon  its  non-utilitarian  and  non-life- 
conserving  character,  to  the  "play  theory"  in  its  extreme  form.  The  truth 
regarding  the  relation  of  leistire  to  art  and  to  the  aesthetic  experience  seems 
to  be  that  leisure  is  at  best  only  a  preliminary  and  largely  negative  condition. 
Mere  leisure,  mere  freedom  from  want  and  danger,  do  not  of  themselves 
give  rise  to  the  aesthetic  experience,  which  stands  for  a  positive  constructive 
process,  a  positive  combination  and  co-operation  of  activities  under  the 
guidance  of  some  organizing  end  and  interest.  This,  leisure  of  itself  does 
not  supply,  although  it  furnishes  opportunity  for  the  gathering  together  of 
materials  susceptible  of  shaping  into  an  aesthetic  whole. 

Hitherto  I  have  not  attempted  to  deal  with  the  paradox  of  the  high 
feeling  value  of  the  aesthetic  experience  and  its  apparent  lack  of  precedent 
conflict  and  strain,  through  the  resolution  of  which  its  characteristic  tone 
of  satisfaction,  ease,  facilitation,  might  be  accounted  for.  The  explanation, 
so  far  as  it  goes,  is  to  be  sought  in  the  realm  of  racial  origins,  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking,  although  it  strikes  its  roots  far  back  into  the  biologic 
series,  and  although  we  are  still  in  the  dark  as  to  the  mechanism  employed. 
But  evolutionary  biology  and  psychology,  particularly  the  modern  psychol- 
ogy of  the  emotions,  have  called  attention  to  the  survival  in  the  individual, 
in  syncopated  and  abbreviated  form  as  attitudes,  tendencies,  dispositions 
within  the  organism,  of  types  of  response  formerly  completing  themselves 
in  outward  movements,  acts  of  high  utility  and  purposiveness  in  dealing 

I  "The  Relation  of  the  Medicine-Man  to  the  Origin  of  the  Professional  Occupa- 
tions," University  of  Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  Vol.  IV. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  63 

with  particular  sorts  of  stimulations.  The  tendencies  to  retreat  and  to 
attack  are  conspicuous  instances  of  such  attitudes.  James  would  include 
them  among  instincts,  and  enumerates  many  others — curiosity,  secretive- 
ness,  acquisitiveness,  constructiveness,  sociability,  and  the  like.  Whether 
we  are  entitled  to  call  reactions  of  so  general  a  nature,  and  called  forth  by 
stimuli  so  varied,  instincts,  is  a  debatable  question;  but  these  tendencies,  at 
any  rate,  represent  definite  acts,  once  fully  accomplished  and  of  tremendous 
survival  value  in  the  early  history  of  the  race.  They  are  certainly  to  be 
distinguished  from  mere  unorganized  and  unselected  impulses.  Biology 
has  familiarized  us  with  the  notion  of  rudimentary  or  atrophied  organs 
once  actively  functioning  under  appropriate  conditions  now  superseded, 
and  even  with  the  notion  of  certain  organs,  such  as  the  flippers  of  a  whale, 
which  have  been  gradually  pressed  into  the  service  of  functions  quite  differ- 
ent from  those  in  whose  service  they  developed.  Structure  alters  more 
slowly  than  does  function,  after  specialization  has  set  in,  and  serves  as 
resource  in  various  ways — a  sort  of  reserve  fund  that  can  be  drawn  upon  in 
emergencies.  This  persistence  in  reduced  and  altered  form  of  structures 
once  actively  functional  is  not  confined  wholly  to  ovir  physiological  make- 
up. It  is  equally  true  psychologically,  although  we  need  to  guard  against 
thinking  of  psychological  structure  and  function  in  set  physical  terms.  They 
stand  rather  as  limiting  terms  with  reference  to  a  total  process  of  control. 
Moreover,  in  dealing  with  the  earlier  manifestations  of  intelligence  we 
cannot  make  any  hard  and  fast  distinctions  between  the  physiological  and 
the  psychical.  Mind  comes  in  as  a  means  of  reorganizing  conflicting  and 
ambiguous  bodily  reactions.  With  more  highly  differentiated  organization, 
certain  simple  and  immediate  types  of  action,  such  as  the  "tropisms"  of 
lower  forms,  have  been  entirely  superseded.  Others,  no  longer  functioning 
independently,  still  play  a  necessary  part  in  the  human  economy.  No 
longer  needed  in  themselves,  they  have  served  as  a  basis  for  further  develop- 
ment, and  have  become  incorporated  into  the  more  elaborate  mechanism. 
Darwin,  as  is  well  known,  explained  the  typical  bodily  expressions  of 
femotion  as  vestiges  of  formerly  useful  movements.  James,  in  his  organic 
theory  of  emotion  as  the  immediate  consciousness  of  reflex  changes  within 
the  body,  admits  that  some  of  the  most  striking  of  these  motor  changes  are 
reduced  forms  of  past  serviceable  actions.^  And  Dewey  in  his  two  papers 
on  "The  Theory  of  Emotion"  explicitly  says: 

It  is  then  in  the  reduction  of  activities  once  performed  for  their  own  sake,  to 
attitudes  now  useful  simply  as  supplying  a  contributory,  a  reinforcing,  or  a  check- 
ing factor,  in  some  more  comprehensive  activity,  that  we  have  all  the  conditions 

I  Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  pp.  478-80. 


64  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

for  high  emotional  disturbance.  The  tendency  to  large  diffusive  waves  of  dis- 
charge is  present,  and  the  inhibition  of  this  outgoing  activity  through  some  per- 
ception or  idea  is  also  present.  The  attitude  stands  for  a  recapitulation  of  thou- 
sands of  acts  formerly  done,  ends  formerly  reached.  It  represents  the  most 
thoroughly  established  habits  and  co-ordinations  of  the  past.' 

According  to  this  view  the  emotion  is  aroused  when  these  inherited  atti- 
tudes are  involved  conspicuously  in  a  new  activity.  As  Dewey  points  out, 
they  may  check  or  reinforce  this  activity.  If  they  fall  in  with  it  at  once,  or 
with  some  phase  of  it,  there  is  no  noticeable  tension  or  inhibition,  and  there- 
fore no  emotion.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  pull  strongly  in  a  contrary 
direction,  there  results  a  sense  of  strain  and  difficulty,  the  extent  and  depth 
of  which  depend  upon  the  number  and  the  range  of  the  subordinate  activities 
affected  as  well  as  upon  the  violence  of  the  interference.  Control  is  fur- 
thered only  by  suppression  of  some  of  the  warring  elements.  Again,  if  none 
of  these  elements  is  suppressed,  but  all  collaborate  in  the  production  of  an 
act  made  up  of  actively  co-operating  processes,  all  modifying  and  reinforcing 
one  another,  there  arises  the  consciousness  of  the  attainment  of  control,  a 
satisfaction  that  is  pleasurably  emotional  and  that  at  its  highest  is  obviously 
aesthetic,  while  even  at  its  slightest  it  differs  from  the  recognized  aesthetic 
only  in  degree.  It  is  when  a  considerable  cluster  of  these  attitudes  and  pre- 
dispositions to  certain  movements  are  called  out  incipiently  by  the  immediate 
situation,  and  simultaneously  coalesce  with  our  response  to  it,  that  we  have 
the  genuine  aesthetic  experience,  with  its  feeling  of  sudden  power  and  vigor, 
its  heightened  sense  of  life,  always  indicating  an  unusual  degree  of  control. 
But  it  is  only  under  comparatively  rare  conditions  that  a  present  situation 
is  in  such  complete  alliance  with  these  old  racial  attitudes  and  survivals. 
Our  biologic,  organic  past  is  immeasurably  longer  than  our  mental  past, 
and  is  consequently  far  more  stable.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  intel- 
ligence is  never  entirely  in  harmony  with  purely  bodily,  physiologic  pro- 
cesses. It  is  constantly  subjecting  them  to  strain,  overexertion,  fatigue. 
The  mutual  adjustment  of  the  older  and  the  newer  types  of  adaptation  is  for 
the  most  part  a  working  and  tentative  adjustment,  not  a  complete  one. 
But  there  are  times  when  the  organism  functioning  as  intelligence  and  the 
organism  functioning  as  plant  or  animal  work  together  with  comparative 
adequacy.  The  mechanisms  of  sense-organ  and  muscle,  of  breathing,  cir- 
culation, and  equilibrium,  all  operate  at  their  best  in  the  one  conscious 
experience.  And  that  experience  is  the  aesthetic.  This  participation  of 
bodily  processes  not  under  the  control  of  consciousness  has  been  dwelt  upon 
in  much  recent  literature.     Vernon  Lee  makes  it  the  essential  element  in  her 

I  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  II,  p.  29. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  65 

analysis  of  the  aesthetics  of  form.  "These  adjustments  of  breathir;g  and 
balance  are  the  actual  physical  mechanism  of  the  perception  of  Form,  the 
sense  of  relation  having  for  its  counterpart  a  sense  of  bodily  tensions."*  The 
aesthetic  perception  of  form  is  that  in  which  these  adjustments  are  most 
fully  and  easily  achieved  and  most  in  accordance  with  our  established 
bodily  structure.  She  quotes  from  Sergi  a  statement  to  the  effect  that 
"aesthetic  pleasure,  like  every  other,  is  a  phenomenon,  not  of  the  cerebral, 
but  of  the  organic  life  of  the  big  viscera — mainly  the  heart  and  lungs."' 
And  she  shows  that  such  participation  of  organic  processes  means  on  the 
mental  side  the  facilitated  and  enriched  attention  that  is  always  involved  in 
the  aesthetic  experience. 3 

While  the  dependence  of  the  aesthetic  experience  upon  fundamental 
bodily  activities  by  no  means  exhausts  the  possibilities  of  description  and 
explanation,  it  does  help  to  account  for  its  lack  of  strain  or  effort,  and  at  the 
same  time  its  possession  of  high  emotional  character.  The  attitudes  on 
which  it  so  largely  draws  are  racial  siirvivals,  and  as  such  have  had  their 
'  distinctive  emotional  aspects  shorn  away  through  repetition  and  subordina- 
tion, except  as  they  enter  into  and  individualize  present  experiences.  In 
these  new  relations  they  give  an  immediate  and  distinctive  emotional  tone 
to  the  consciousness  of  the  moment. 

Herbert  Spencer  was  the  first  to  apply  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of 
racial  experience  to  the  problems  of  modern  psychology  and  philosophy. 
He  based  it  on  the  doubtful  biologic  principle  of  the  inheritance  of  acquired 
characters,  and  used  it  in  support  of  an  associationist  psychology  and  a 
hedonistic  ethics,  making  ends  attained  the  result  of  calculation  on  the  part 
of  our  remote  ancestors,  if  not  of  ourselves.  Nowadays  we  have  put  the 
conception  on  another  basis  by  recognizing  the  instinctive  and  impulsive 
character  of  much  past  and  present  experience,  and  the  constant  passing 
back  and  forth  of  the  mediate  and  immediate  types  of  response.  But  we 
are  still  far  from  a  satisfactory  understanding  of  the  procedure  involved,  and 
fall  back  on  the  general  position  only  when  a  problem  balks  our  solution  in 
other  terms. 

ni.      THE    SOCIAL   PSYCHOLOGY   OF   THE    AESTHETIC   EXPERIENCE 

It  is  sometimes  argued  that  the  aesthetic  experience,  instead  of  marking 
a  culmination,  being  a  "saturation,"  as  it  were,  of  values,  is  experience  of  a 

I  "  Beauty  and  Ugliness,"  Contemporary  Review,  Vol.  LXXII,  pp.  550,  551. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  552. 

3  "Art  and  Usefulness,"  ibid.,  Vol.  LXXX,  pp.  516,  517;  cf.  Professor  M.  W. 
Calkins,  Introduction  to  Psychology,  pp.  279-81. 


t 


66  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

relatively  undeveloped  and  undifferentiated  kind.  Instead  of  representing 
the  highest  stage  of  co-ordination  among  a  group  of  closely  interlaced  pro- 
"  I  cesses,  enriched  through  many  past  adaptations,  it  is  said  to  furnish  mere 
stuff,  raw  material,  for  reflection,  and  to  pass  into  it  as  to  a  more  advanced 
stage  of  evolution.  In  the  history  of  the  race,  too,  it  is  still  sometimes  main- 
tained that  artistic  creation  necessarily  precedes  scientific  investigation  and 
analysis.  Though  so  crude  a  generalization  as  Macaulay's  regarding  the 
inverse  growth  of  civilization  and  poetry  has  been  laughed  to  scorn,  the 
notion  yet  lurks  in  more  insidious  form.  In  the  individual  the  capacity  for 
aesthetic  enjoyment  is  alleged  to  shrivel  before  the  establishment  of  habits  of 
intellectual  inquiry.  Darwin's  regretful  testimony  as  to  his  loss  of  interest 
in  certain  art  products  and  activities  is  taken  at  its  face  value,  and  has 
furnished  the  text  for  many  a  diatribe  upon  the  blighting  effects  of  scientific 
pursuits.  Tyndall's  essay  on  the  scientific  imagination  should  be  enough 
to  convince  that  withdrawal  of  attention  from  conventionally  recognized 
aesthetic  interests  does  not  necessarily  mean  an  inability  to  take  the  aesthetic 
attitude,  to  have  a  genuine  aesthetic  experience.  Such  strictures  are  based 
either  upon  a  confusion  between  certain  accepted  aesthetic  materials  and  the 
aesthetic  experience  as  a  distinctive  conscious  attitude,  or  upon  a  confusion 
between  reflection  at  large  and  particular  acts  of  reflection.  The  first  type 
of  error  calls  for  no  further  comment.     An  experience  is  not  of  necessityi 

/  non-aesthetic  psychologically  because  it  fails  to  center  itself  on  poetry,! 

'  painting,  music,  or  other  conventional  aesthetic  media.  With  regard  to  the> 
second  error,  it  is  enough  to  recall  what  has  been  said  of  the  rhythmic  nature 
of  experience,  one  type  passing  over  into  another,  as  occasion  demands, 
immediate  experience  breaking  down  and  leading  to  experience  of  the  recon- 
structive type.  While  the  aesthetic  always  stands  for  a  resolution  of  con- 
flicting tensions,  the  establishing  of  mutual  interplay  and  reinforcement 
among  activities,  and  therefore  indicates  control  of  a  particular  situation,  it 
also  serves  as  the  point  of  departure  for  a  new  form  of  mental  operation. 
If  it  did  not,  it  would  be  an  inexplicable  anomaly  in  experience,  and  would 
effectuaUy  blockade  consciousness  as  a  selective  and  adaptive  agency. 
One  reason,  to  my  mind,  for  the  obscurity  of  much  discussion  of  the  aesthetic 
experience  is  just  this  failure  to  take  into  accoimt  its  stimulative  and  origina- 
tive aspects.  The  discharge,  if  we  may  so  term  it,  of  the  aesthetic  experi- 
ence is,  of  course,  not  uniform.  At  one  time  it  may  lead  to  direct  outward 
action  of  one  sort  or  another;  in  the  artist,  for  instance,  to  the  technique  of 
production.  Again,  and  frequently,  it  leads  to  an  act  of  reflective  thought, 
set  off  by  some  of  its  constituent  elements;  sometimes  it  may  provoke  critical 
analysis  of  its  own  character  and  make-up.     But  this  does  not  mean 


\J 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  67 

that  many  previous  judgment  processes  have  not  gone  to  the  making  of 
the  aesthetic. 

Moreover,  we  need  to  remind  ourselves  that  the  distinctions  emerging 
in  the  subsequent  critical  judgment  upon  the  aesthetic  experience  are  not 
present  in  any  such  form  within  the  experience  itself.  They  first  come  to 
clear  consciousness  within  the  grasp  of  reflection,  although  they  are  held  in 
solution,  as  it  were,  within  the  aesthetic  moment.  In  this  they  are  like 
qualities  or  elements  of  ''pure  sensation,"  which  are  also  merely  implicit 
in  the  immediate  situation,  and  are  isolated  and  abstracted  only  through 
deliberate  intellectual  analysis.  Both  are  in  a  sense  abstractions,  "arte- 
facts," methodological  instruments  as  truly  as  are  atoms  and  ether  waves, 
not  given  in  the  immediate  perceptual  or  aesthetic  experience,  and  not 
possessing  an  independent  existential  character. 

The  fact  that  detailed  analysis  of  the  aesthetic  experience  is  possible 
only  through  subsequent  judgments  of  introspection  does  not  mean  that 
many  and  many  a  previous  judgment  has  not  gone  into  the  making  of  the 
aesthetic  experience.  Its  richness  of  content  implies  that.  Neither  does 
it  mean  that  as  immediate  experience  it  is  wholly  devoid  of  judgmental 
character.  As  feeling,  as  immediate  sense  of  value,  it  is  inherently  judg- 
mental, as  all  consciousness  of  meaning  must  be.  But  it  is  of  the  nature 
of  an  "intuitive"  or  individual,  rather  than  an  instrumental  or  reflect- 
ive judgment.^  It  is  a  storehouse  of  past  meanings,  of  which  each  has 
lapsed  as  an  independent  end.  In  this  sense  the  aesthetic  experience 
is  "post-judgmental."^  But  that  does  not  mean  that  it  is  a  mere  "dead 
judgment."  It  is,  as  we  all  know,  a  peculiarly  alive  sort  of  experience, 
charged  emotionally  with  the  blended  meanings  of  past  judgments  and 
adjustments  of  all  kinds.  And  this  emotional  charging  means  that  the 
experience  is  rich  in  materials  for  further  judgments.  If  it  be  a  store- 
house, it  is  also  a/magazine  of  meanings.  But  the  judgments  that  it 
touches  oS  are  not  the  judgments  that  went  into  its  making. 

Accordingly,  although  the  critical  reflection  upon  the  aesthetic  experi- 
ence must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  the  experience  itself,  and  repre- 
sents a  kind  of  inquiry  of  late  development  in  the  race  and  in  the  indi- 
vidual, its  conclusions  shed  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  inner  constitution  of 
that  experience,  and  are  of  inestimable  value,  so  long  as  we  avoid  confusing 
the  observer's  with  the  experiencer's  attitude,  and  assuming  that  the 
'  experience  itself  is  a  mere  mosaic  of  the  elements  analyzed  out  of 
it;  in  other  words,  avoid  any  of  the  forms  of  the  psychologist's  fallacy,  to 

I  Dewey,  Sttidies  in  Logical  Theory,  VI,  pp.  134-42  (S.  F.  McLennan). 

'  Ibid.,  X,  pp.  339,  340  (H.  W.  Stuart). 


68  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

which  we  are  fatally  prontf  in  attempting  to  handle  any  kind  of  immediate 
experience. 

Of  the  distinctions  thus  brought  to  light,  many  have  been  elevated  to  the 
position  of  independent  "aesthetic  categories,"  and  a  number  lend  them- 
selves to  clearest  interpretation  in  terms  of  social  psychology,  thus  connecting 
closely  with  the  present  stage  of  our  discussion.  Among  these  are  the 
commonly  accepted  aesthetic  criteria,  which  I  have  aheady  touched  upon  in 
Part  I — such  categories  as  wholeness,  detachedness,  objectivity,  universality. 
About  the  meaning  of  the  objective  and  the  subjective  in  aesthetics  philoso- 
phic controversy  has  gathered  in  all  schools.  Some  of  the  difficulties,  here 
and  elsewhere,  arise  from  the  tendency  to  treat  problems  too  much  in  isola- 
tion, and  from  the  failure  to  observe  the  distinction  between  immediate 
aesthetic  experience  and  subsequent  aesthetic  criticism,  or  from  the  illegiti- 
mate carrying-over  of  the  results  of  the  one  into  the  description  of  the  other. 
Modern  aesthetic  theory  has  centered  around  the  problems  of  the  place  and  ^ 
function  of  the  aesthetic  in  the  relations  of  the  individual  and  society;  the  \^ 
meaning  of  "aesthetic  sympathy;"  the  aesthetic  bearings  of  imitation,  sug- 
gestion, contagion,  and  the  like;  the  relation  of  the  "aesthetic  object"  to  the 
"social  object"  and  the  "physical  object."  Such  topics  as  these  last 
obviously  fall  within  the  field  of  social  psychology — a  branch  of  inquiry  the 
importance  of  which  for  the  solution  of  many  vexing  problems  is  just  coming 
to  be  recognized,  and  the  materials  and  methods  of  which  are  becoming 
defined  with  considerable  exactness.  An  approach  through  these  distinc- 
tively social  categories  may  serve  to  present  the  classic  categories  of  objec- 
tivity, subjectivity,  etc.,  in  a  somewhat  new  light,  and  thus  further  our 
inquiry  more  effectually  than  if  we  approached  them  directly. 

In  current  psychology  and  social  theory  the  old  hard  and  fast  opposition 
between  the  individual  and  society  has  been  broken  down.  The  two  are  . 
no  longer  thought  of  as  fixed  units  in  some  sort  of  external  and  arbitrary  J ' 
relation,  but  as  two  poles,  or,  better,  two  foci  of  experience,  two  reciprocal 
and  correlative  phases  of  the  social  process."  In  the  history  of  the  race  the 
organization  of  society  and  the  organization  of  the  individual  consciousness 
have  advanced  together]  acting  and  reacting  on  each  other.  Reflective 
distinctions  represent  to  a  great  extent  the  internalizing  of  distinctions 
originally  external  and  social — Plato's  procedure  in  the  Republic  is  a  con- 
spicuous instance  of  this,  although  its  importance  is  not  commonly  recog- 

I  For  recent  statements  of  this  view,  cf.  C.  H.  Cooley,  Human  Nature  and  the 
Social  Order,  especially  chaps,  i,  iii,  v,  vi;]  and  A.  H.  Lloyd,  "The  Organic  Theory  of 
Society,"  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  VI,  and  "The  Social  Will,"  ibid., 
Vol.  VIII. 


SOCIAL   ASPECTS   OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  69 

nized;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  thinking  individual  reacts  upon  and 
profoundly  modifies  social  structure.  Customs  and  institutions  stand  for 
the  established  resources,  the  funded  investments,  of  a  society — in  other 
words,  for  its  habits;  the  individual  stands  for  its  forward  movement,  its 
ventures,  its  "growing-point" — in  other  words,  for  its  focus  of  attention. 
In  early  racial  history,  as  we  have  seen,  social  structure  and  conscious 
experiences  alike  were  rudimentary  and  inchoate.  In  the  processes  of  gain- 
ing control  over  the  immediate  food-environment,  group-coherence  and 
group-action  were  all  important  for  preservation;  individual  initiative  was 
dangerous  for  the  existence  both  of  the  group  and  of  the  individual ;  and  so 
was  rigidly  repressed — or  rather,  failed  to  develop,  since  conditions  were 
inimical  to  such  variation.  In  the  predatory  stage,  however,  a  few  objects, 
chiefly  animals  and  weapons,  emerged  for  consciousness  with  considerable 
distinctness,  became  pretty  sharply  individualized.  They  were  still  thought 
of,  however,  as  part  of  a  man's  total  activity  in  a  very  close  and  real  sense. 
They  had  not  yet  split  off  into  wholly  independent  and  indifferent  objects, 
mere  "things,"  tools  for  further  operations,  or  in  still  more  abbreviated 
form,  mere  cues  to  definite  and  familiar  action.  As  has  been  abundantly 
shown  in  recent  treatments  of  the  problem,  primitive  man  did  not  personify 
inanimate  objects  in  the  sense  of  injecting  human  attributes  into  them;  he 
did  not  anthropomorphize  in  our  sense  of  the  term.  He  had  not  yet  clearly 
separated  out  either  himself  or  his  physical  world  from  a  sort  of  activity 
continuum,^  Many  of  the  things  that  are  for  us  obvious  physical,  inanimate 
objects  were  for  him  practically  not  objects  at  aU,  but  only  imperfectly 
defined  stimulations  to  instinctive  and  impulsive  action.  The  few  that  he 
had  built  up  into  objects  were  still  so  fully  the  central  points  of  his  struggle 
for  existence  that  they  were  a  part  of  his  own  personality,  suffused  with 
an  activity  coloring. 

On  the  side  of  the  modern  individual  such  an  exposition  as  that  of  Bald- 
win jreveals  how  fundamentally  the  individual  self  is  the  socius,  the  focus 
point  of  interactions  between  his  meager  organic  equipment  and  his  social 
world.  This  interaction,  this  constant  play  of  stimulus  and  response,  each 
term  of  the  equation  serving  now  as  one,  now  as  the  other,  and  in  a  sense 
always  functioning  as  both,  continues  as  long  as  life  lasts.  It  is  Baldwin's 
"  dialectic  "  of  the  growth  of  the  social  self.  But  the  stages  are  most  obvious 
in  infancy  and  early  childhood.  Baldwin  distinguishes  the  projective,  the 
subjective,  and  the  ejective  or  fully  social  stage.  In  the  first,  certain  of  the 
child's  vague  organic  and  impulsive  reactions  meet  with  definite  response, 

I  Dewey,  "Interpretation  of  Savage  Mind,"  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  IX,  pp. 
222,  223. 


70  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

chiefly  through  the  movements  of  persons  ministering  to  its  needs.  Thus 
arises  |a  vague  sense  of  the  distinction  between  persons  and  things — or, 
rather,  a  rudimentary  direction  of  the  attention  to  persons  as  moving  objects, 
satisfyiiig  organic  cravings.  Further,  there  dawns  a  sense  of  the  irregularity 
of  personal  responses.  Sometimes  people  give  the  child  what  he  wants; 
sometimes  they  do  not.  This  is  the  germ  of  the  sense  of  agency,  and  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  growing  awareness  of  difference  among  agents.  In  the  second 
or  subjective  stage,  the  child  begins  to  control  his  own  reactions  with  refer- 
ence to  these  personal  agents,  and  thus  comes  to  recognition  of  himself 
as  agent,  through  an  appropriation  to  himself  of  his  sense  of  other  persons. 
In  the  third  or  ejective  stage,  he  enlarges  his  notion  of  others  by  reflecting 
back  upon  them  his  own  experiences  of  activity,  effort,  and  control.  This 
analysis  does  away  with  the  older  view  that  the  individual's  notion  of  others 
is  an  inference,  an  indirect  construction  on  the  basis  of  his  direct  awareness 
of  himself.  It  establishes  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  consciousness  of  indi- 
viduality, of  self,  is  built  up  primarily  through  reaction  to  one's  human 
environment,  and  so  is  social  from  the  first;  that  one  knows  others  vaguely 
as  persons  before  one  knows  oneself  as  a  person.  Along  with  the  growth  of 
the  child's  notions  of  persons  grows  his  notions  of  things,  as  stimuli  toward 
which  he  can  react  with  more  unfailing  regularity,  upon  which  he  can 
depend.  But  this  realization  is  of  slower  growth  and  for  a  long  time  subsi- 
diary to  his  interest  in  persons.  Through  this  distinction  between  persons 
as  agents  and  things  as  tools  arises  gradually  the  recognition  of  the  distinc- 
tion between  body  and  mind,  noticed  first  in  others  and  then  reflected  back 
into  himself.^ 

Baldwin  makes  imitation  in  his  sense  of  the  term  the  method  of  this  entire 
growth,  but  a  more  satisfactory  statement  from  our  point  of  view  is  in  terms 
of  the  inhibition  and  working-over  into  wider  co-ordinations  of  impulses, 
through  successful  and  unsuccessful  responses  to  a  stimulus,  and,  on  the 
external  side,  the  gradual  building-up  of  the  stimulus  into  an  organized  object. 
It  thus  results  that  the  social  self  and  its  world  are  constructed  at  the  same 
time.  One  is,  in  fact,  unthinkable  without  the  other.  It  is  important  to 
remember  to  how  large  a  degree  this  early  world  is  a  world  of  persons. 
Things  that  to  adults  are  whoUy  uniform  in  operation  present  all  manner  of 
perversities  to  the  child.  The  complexities  of  buttons,  hooks,  and  strings 
is  a  case  in  point.  He  slaps  the  door  that  pinches  his  finger,  and  says, 
"Naughty  door!"  he  punishes  his  toys  that  will  not  work.  Just  so'^the 
savage  finds  all  natural  objects  which  he  notices  at   all  either  hostile  or 

I  Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  the  Race:  Methods  and  Processes,  pp.  1 7-20, 
122-30,  334-48. 


Ix 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  7 1 

friendly  to  his  group;  even  the  Greeks  within  historic  times  had  a  court 
for  trying  inanimate  objects  that  had  caused  the  death  of  anyone,  and  old 
English  law  declared  such  objects  forfeited  and  to  be  sold  for  the  poor.^ 

While  the  processes  of  constructing  the  social  self  and  the  social  and 
physical  world  are  infinitely  more  spontaneous,  interrelated,  and  informal 
than  Baldwin's  account  suggests,  yet  it  is  sufl&ciently  obvious  that  for  both 
the  race  and  the  individual  experience  is  at  first  vaguely  social  or  personal; 
then  more  definitely  in  terms  of  a  cluster  of  active  agencies.  Through 
clashes  and  shortcomings  among  these  agencies,  necessitating  a  more  diflfer- 
entiated  control,  arises  the  more  or  less  clear  distinction  between  the  physical 
or  material  and  the  social,  and  a  consciousness  of  the  self  as  an  agency  over 
against  a  world  that  it  manipulates. 

The  physical  object  is  thus  in  a  sense  an  abstraction  from  the  social 
object.  It  is  an  object  constructed  originally  for  consciousness  through 
human  effort  and  human  interest.  It  is  a  plexus  of  personal  attitudes  and 
relations.  But  its  behavior  is  so  regular,  it  can  be  counted  on  with  such 
certainty  and  reacted  to  with  so  little  need  of  readjustment,  that  many  of 
its  aspects  drop  away,  particularly  its  agency  aspect  and  its  emotional  nim- 
bus, both  of  which  indicate  relative  uncertainty  as  to  modes  of  dealing  with 
it.  With  repeated  use,  it  wears  down  in  immediate  experience  to  a  symbol, 
a  signal  for  action.  It  becomes  again  a  stimulus  rather  than  an  object, 
although  now  a  stimulus  to  a  definite  and  co-ordinated  response.  When 
it  is  seized  upon  as  a  means,  an  available  tool,  in  effecting  some  further 
reconstruction,  grappling  with  some  new  problem,  it  regains  again  its 
objective  character.  In  the  moment  of  scrutinizing  it,  of  deciding  whether 
it  is  suitable  for  the  purpose  in  hand,  attention  once  more  fastens  upon  it, 
and  it  becomes  for  the  flash  once  more  a  fully  evolved  physical  object.^ 
If  rejected  or  if  used  at  once,  its  objectivity  vanishes  or  reduces  to  a  pin- 
point in  the  total  activity.  Even  more  fully  does  it  clothe  itself  afresh  with 
objectivity  when  it  becomes  itseff  the  subject,  the  focus  of  attention.  But 
this  happens  only  when  it  is  looked  upon  as  a  problem,  when  it  has  become 
ambiguous  as  a  cue  to  action;  and  in  the  course  of  reflection  it  is  recon- 
structed, becomes  practically  a  new  object. 

This  statement  suggests  a  view  that  we  are  likely  to  overlook  and  that  is 
not  brought  out  in  Baldwin's  account  of  the  construction  of  the  social  self — 
the  view,  namely,  that  the  various  constructive  stages  are  not  merely  suc- 
cessive in  the  first  organization  of  experience,  but  are  recurrent  in  every 
process  of  reconstruction.  When  for  any  reason  a  portion  of  our  world  in 
I  E.  B.  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  Vol.  I,  pp.  286,  287. 
'  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  X,  pp.  247-57  (Stuart), 


72  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

regard  to  which  we  have  acted  with  assurance  ceases  to  offer  an  unequivocal 
guide  to  conduct,  it  may  be  said  that  it  practically  disappears  temporarily, 
leaving  us  in  a  state  of  mental  groping,  unpleasantly  tinged  emotionally,  out 
of  which  dawn  the  two  positive  centers  of  the  self  as  managing  the  disturbed 
situation  and  the  end  or  object  with  reference  to  which  one  may  ultimately 
act  freely.  These  two  are  at  first  held  apart,  but  are  gradually  brought 
together  through  a  survey  and  employment  of  the  various  objects,  data,  or 
means  examined  and  found  available.  The  moment  of  reconciliation,  of 
coalescence,  is  saturated  with  a  consciousness  of  the  renewed  agreement  of 
the  self  and  the  situation.  It  marks  the  attainment  of  a  new  and  more  com- 
plete reality.  In  such  a  reconstructive  experience  we  have  for  the  first 
stage  what  approaches  a  state  of  pure  subjectivity,  the  temporary  disappear- 
ance of  all  definite  objective  reference  with  regard  to  the  specific  interest  on 
hand.  In  the  second  stage  we  have  the  active  "empirical  self"  over  against 
the  "objects  or  data  that  it  is  handhng;  and  in  the  third  stage  we  have  the 
identification  of  the  self  with  the  new  object,  and  the  blending  of  both  self 
and  object  in  the  total  reality.  Here  we  have  an  approximation  to  the  ori- 
ginal undifferentiated  continuum,  and  to  the  original  subjective  and  ejec- 
tive  stages.  This  last  stage  is  what  we  have  already  called  the  "aesthetic 
moment."  It  is  now  seen  to  be  also  the  most  entirely  socialized  moment  in 
consciousness,  for  it  represents  a  harmony  between  the  individual  and  his 
world;  and  both  are  pre-eminently  social.  With  the  actual  resumption  of 
outward  action,  and  with  repetition  of  such  action,  this  moment  is  shorn  of 
much  of  its  richness  for  consciousness.  It  sloughs  off  its  peculiar  social 
and  aesthetic  character ;  the  object  tends  to  become  either  a  mere  signal  for 
action,  or  again  a  mere  means  or  physical  object.^ 

So  far,  then,  as  I  am  able  to  state  the  matter  to  myself,  the  aesthetic  object 
from  this  point  of  view  is  the  social  object  at  its  first  moment  of  completed 
construction,  of  richest  significance.  It  represents  the  healing  of  the  breach 
between  the  self  and  the  object,  the  culmination  of  the  mediating  processes, 
an  experience  saturated  with  the  feeling  of  satisfaction.  It  is  therefore 
reality  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term.  This  aesthetic  determination  of 
reality  is  social,  and  the  converse  may  also  be  assumed  to  be  true,  that  a 
genuinely  social  determination  of  reality  has  always  in  it  something  of  the 
aesthetic. 

In  this  connection,  of  course,  I  am  using  social  with  reference  to  the 
make-up  of  consciousness  at  a  particular  moment,  and  not  with  reference 
to  the  outward  constitution  and  activities  of  society.     To  illustrate  by  a 

I  G.  H.  Mead,  unpublished  lectures,  and  "The  Definition  of  the  Psychical,* 
University  of  Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  Vol.  Ill,  especially  pp.  loo-ii. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  73 

simple  example  the  different  types  of  objects  of  which  I  have  been  speaking: 
If,  on  a  country  walk,  the  sight  of  a  tree]  leads  me  simply  to  deflect  my 
course  in  order  to  avoid  it,  it  is  a  mere  stimulus  or  cue  to  immediate  habitual 
action,  not  bulking  in  consciousness  as  an  object  in  the  true  sense  at  all; 
if  I  climb  it  to  escape  danger,  or  to  obtain  a  wider  outlook,  or  to  gather  nuts, 
it  becomes  a  physical  object  or  means  to  an  end;  if  I  dwell  with  pleasure 
upon  the  contemplation  of  it,  it  exists  for  me  as  an  aesthetic  object,  the 
core  of  an  aesthetic  experience.  And  it  is  social, [though  I  be  alone  and  do 
not  give  a  thought  to  another  human  being,  because  it  stirs  up  in  me  simul- 
taneously a  complex  of  incipient  reactions  toward  it,  tendencies  toward 
manifold  possible  ways  of  dealing  with  it.  All  of  these  are  now  inhibited 
from  discharge,  limited  to  the  organism,  and  in  rhythmical  relations  to  one 
another.  But  as  originally  carried  out  they  meant  specific  acts  centering 
about  the  tree,  ways  in  which  it  was  made  to  minister  to  human  needs,  oper- 
ations which  involved  joint  human  action.  Biicher  has  pointed  out  the 
immense  significance  of  co-operative  manual  labor  in  the  development  of 
poetry  and  music;  and  the  other  arts  are  nearly  as  much  in  its  debt.  But 
there  are  undoubtedly  other  occasions  for  co-operative  movements;  the 
roots  of  such  movements  strike  deeper  into  biologic  history,  and  are  more 
delicately  and  finely  interlaced  than  that.  Kropotkin's  Mutual  Aid  presents 
a  mass  of  data  along  this  line.  All  that  we  can  say  with  confidence  of  such 
an  experience  as  that  of  the  aesthetic  appreciation  of  the  tree  is  that  it  lifts 
consciousness  to  an  emotional  vividness  otherwise  attained  only  through 
intercourse  with  persons.  Our  perception  of  the  tree  approximates  the 
warmth  and  intimacy  of  association  with  our  kind  under  the  most  favorable 
circumstances.  There  is  a  similar  sense  of  enlargement  of  capacity,  of 
participating  in  the  life  and  activities  of  another,  of  breaking  down  the 
barriers  that  ordinarily  hedge  us  in.  All  this,  of  course,  is  implicit  and 
unformulated  at  the  time,  but  it  is  this  aspect  of  the  aesthetic  experience, 
however  fancifully  one  is  obliged  to  describe  it,if^that  lies  at  the  base  of  the 
assertion  that  aesthetic  interest  is  always  an  interest  in  personality,  in  that 
which  is  human  or  quasi-human.^  )  Aesthetic  interest  in  mere  things  is 
always  unconsciously  but  inevitably  guilty  of  the  "pathetic  fallacy."  The 
same  idea  is  set  forth  in  the  often  reiterated  assertion  that  the  aesthetic  is 
that  which  directly  enhances  the  sense  of  life,  since  our  fullest  and  most 
characteristically  human  life  is  social.  Berenson  states  it  explicitly  for 
painting  when  he  says  that  the  human  body  is  the  most  intensely  and 
directly  life-communicating  object,  and  so  admits  of  the  most  entirely 
aesthetic  treatment."     But  the  range  of  application  of  this  view  is  far 

I  Henry  Sturt,  Personal  Idealism,  Essay  VI,  "Art  and  Personality." 
^  I  '  The  Florentine  Painters  of  the  Renaissance,  pp.  84-88. 


74  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

broader  than  that  of  any  mere  choice  of  subject.    The  aesthetic  is  social  in 
the  fullest  psychological  sense  of  the  term. 

To  say  that  the  aesthetic  experience  is  social  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  a  state  of  high  pleasurable  feeling  is  social,  and  this  may  be  a  hard 
saying  to  those  who  hold  that  feeUng  and  emotion  are  essentially  subjec- 
tive and  individual.  Such  a  position  ignores  the  social  elements  in  solution, 
at  least,  in  all  consciousness,  and  furthermore  overlooks  the  undoubted  fact 
that  emotion,  particularly  pleasurable  emotion,  presses  toward  expression — 

f  or,  better,  toward  communication.  It  has  been  commonly  said  that  joy, 
satisfaction,  are  social  emotions.  And  it  is  matter  of  daily  experience 
that  a  state  of  gratification  or  elation  does  not  come  to  fruition  until  we 
have  communicated  it  to  somebody  else.  Painful  emotion,  too,  seeks 
relief  in  one  of  two  ways:  either  by  the  direct,  and  one  may  call  it  the 
cheap  and  easy,  mode  of  communication  to  others,  or  by  the  indirect  mode 
of  repression  and  consequent  translation  into  thought.  It  may  be  argued 
that  even  in  this  case  there  is  a  division  of  selves  that  may  be  interpreted  as 
social  and  involving  communication.]  Professor  Scott,  of  the  University 
of  Michigan,  has  recently  maintained  the  thesis  that  prose  is  expression 
for  communication's  sake,  poetry  is  communication  for  expression's  sake." 
Without  giving  or  examining  his  argument,  which  has  many  points  of 
interest,  I  should  like  to  paraphrase  his  statement  thus:  The  non-aesthetic 
is  communication  for  cognition's  sake;  the  aesthetic  is  communicaton  for 
emotion's  sake.  Both  thinking  and  feeling  involve  communication,  lead 
to  action.  We  have  long  accepted  James's  dictum  that  all  consciousness 
is  motor;  we  perhaps  do  not  recognize  so  clearly  that(1:he  most  important 
phases  of  that  action  have  reference  to  our  fellow-men,  so  that  we  can  truly 

'  say  also  that  all  consciousness  is  social.  It  is  true  that  thought  reaches 
communication  and  a  social  result  by  a  less  direct  path  than  does  emotion. 
In  its  essence  it  is  analytic,  mediatory,  individual,  but  its  goal  is  neverthe- 
less a  social  goal.  Its  purpose  is  to  make  possible  a  better,  more  efficient 
type  of  social  action.  Emotion  gains  its  social  goal  by  a  straighter  path. 
As  emotion,  it  is  evanescent;  it  pushes  toward  something  else.  In  the  case 
of  the  artist  the  urge  toward  communication  inherent  in  a  large  volume 
of  pleasurable  emotion  is  intense  enough  and  specific  enough  to  lead  to 
actual  creative  construction,  both  completing  and  controlling  itself  thereby. 
In  the  aesthetic  experience  of  less  intensity,  as  in  the  case  of  the  spectator, 
the  appreciator,  the  impulse  to  communication  is  less  concentrated,  tends 
more  to  diffused  discharge;  it  may  exhaust  itself  in  a  vague  sense  of 
emotional  unison  with  the  artist,  with  the  immediate  social  world,  with 
^  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Association,  Vol.  XIX,  No.  X. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  75 

humanity  at  large.  It  perhaps  rarely  comes  to  a  head  in  a  definite  type 
of  social  action,  though  it  undoubtedly  serves  as  a  directive  agency  in 
the  various  affairs  of  everyday  life.  If  cherished  for  its  own  sake,  such 
an  emotional  attitude  runs  into  sentimentairsm.  It  is  against  such  emo- 
tional self-indulgence  that  James  humorously  warns  us  when  he  says: 
"The  remedy  would  be,  never  to  suffer  oneself  to  have  an  emotion  .  .  .  . 
without  expressing  it  afterward  in  some  active  way.  Let  the  expression 
be  the  least  thing  in  the  world — speaking  genially  to  one's  aunt,  or  giving 
up  one's  seat  in  a  horse-car,  if  nothing  more  heroic  offers — but  let  it  not 
fail  to  take  place." 

With  all  their  differences  both  the  reflective  and  the  aesthetic  experi- 
ences stand  for  the  dwelling  upon  a  situation  made  up  of  various  elements. 
Neither  is  merely  a  point  of  transition  to  a  new  attitude.  But  whereas 
the  situation  calling  for  reflection  has  fallen  into  disarray,  contains  jostling 
elements,  necessitating  selective,  indicative  attention,  oscillating  between 
aspects  in  the  effort  to  reconcile  them  in  the  light  of  some  recognized  end, 
the  aesthetic  situation  presents  the  various  elements  within  it  functioning 
in  harmony,  and  holds  attention  absorbed  by  their  rich  interplay.  This 
dwelling  of  the  attention  upon  the  situation,  this  realization  of  the  object 
to  the  full  with  the  least  fatigue  and  distraction,  has  been  pointed  out  as 
the  psychological  essence  of  the  aesthetic  experience.  Vernon  Lee  puts 
it  thus  in  her  rhapsodical  fashion:  "Beauty  is  born  of  attention,  as  happi- 
ness is  born  of  life,  because  attention  is  rendered  difficult  and  painful  by 
lack  of  harmony,  even  as  life  is  clogged,  diminished,  or  destroyed  by  pain. 
....  Beauty  of  no  kind  whatever,  nor  in  any  art,  can  really  exist  for 
the  inattentive,  for  the  overworked,  or  for  the  idle."^  And  Groos  says: 
"The  difference  between  appearance  in  general  and  aesthetic  appearance 
is  in  effect  an  intensive  difference.  The  first  serves;  the  second  governs; 
one  is  fugitive;  the  other  holds  us  captive."*  In  any  such  statement,  how- 
ever, of  the  aesthetic  experience  as  a  case  of  absorbed  or  spontaneous  atten- 
tion, it  is  essential  to  remember  that  attention  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a 
special  outside  agency  or  activity  brought  to  bear  upon  the  situation.  The 
co-operation  of  many  activities  in  rhythmic  equilibrium  is  that  conscious 
state  that  we  call  absorbed  attention,  just  as  the  gradual  readjustment 
of  disturbed  activities  in  the  reflective  situation  is  voluntary,  indicative 
attention. 

Looking  at  the  aesthetic  experience  as  a  bundle  of  incipient  social 
reactions,  we  find  some  light  on  the  phenomena  that  have  been  discussed 

I  "Art  and  Usefulness,"  II,  Contemporary  Review,  Vol.  LXXX. 

'  EinleUung  in  die  Aesthetik,  p.  443. 


76  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

under  the  terms  "aesthetic  sympathy,"  "suggestion,"  "contagion"  or 
"infection,"  and  the  like.  I  have  set  forth  earher  in  this  paper  the  theory 
that  the  object  stands  for  the  partial  inhibition  and  interrelation  of  the 
various  responses  once  made  directly  to  it  as  a  stimulus,  and  that  the 
aesthetic  experience  stands  for  the  fullest  possible  simultaneous  excitation 
of  these  old  tendencies  to  response.  This  is  literally  a  "  f eeling-with "  the 
object,  an  actual  present  experience,  in  diminished  form,  of  sundry  ten- 
sions, stresses,  and  strains  of  the  body  which  contributed  to  its  original 
construction  and  definition.  In  space  perception,  markedly  in  the  space- 
arts,  it  becomes  Berenson's  "sense  of  tactile  values,"^  a  stirring  of  the 
innumerable  tactual-motor  sensations  that  have  gone  into  the  building  of 
our  perceptions  of  solidity,  of  three-dimensional  space.  This  "inner 
movement "  was  pointed  out  long  ago  by  Adam  Smith,  and  made  the  basis 
of  his  general  theory  of  sympathy. '  It  has  been  refined  upon  by  modem 
psychologists,  and  described  as  an  "inner  imitation"  of  the  form  and 
"pattern"  of  a  work  of  art,  sometimes  directly  through  actually  aroused 
organic  movements,  sometimes  indirectly  through  the  excitation  of  the 
appropriate  motor  images.  Without  going  into  the  question  whether 
motor  imagery  does  not  always  mean  actual  incipient  movement  or  into 

i\the  other  question  as  to  how  far  the  motor  element  enters  in  the  case  of 
-.  I  jthose  whose  imagery  is   dominantly  visual   or   auditory,   we   may  admit 

(  beyond  a  doubt  that  a  large  part  of  the  aesthetic  experience  consists  in  the 
stirring  of  a  motor  complex,  made  up  probably  both  of  actual  bodily  strains 
and  tensions,  a  general  organic  resonance,  and  of  motor  asociations.  In 
all  these  views  the  object  is  taken  for  granted  as  aheady  there,  a  "given;" 
and  these  motor  reactions  are  considered  as  occurring  subsequent  to  the 
immediate  apprehension,  and  not  as  involved  in  the  construction  of  the 
aesthetic  object,  a  constituent  part  of  the  total  aesthetic  experience.  Such 
aesthetic  sympathy,  accomplished  through  "inner  imitation"  or  other- 
wise, may  be  described  either  as  an  entering  of  the  object  into  the  organic 
life  of  the  individual,  or  as  a  passing-over  of  the  individual's  organic  life 
into  the  object.  The  phrasing  is  indifferent.  What  is  meant  in  both 
cases  is  that  the  two  are  blended  in  a  peculiarly  intimate  way. 

These  theories  deal  chiefly  or  exclusively  with  the  direct  relation  between 
the  artist  or  the  appreciator  and  the  work  of  art  in  the  immediate  aesthetic 
experience;  but  they  lend  themselves  to  social  interpretation,  in  the  objec- 
tive sense  of  the  term  as  distinguished  from  the  sense  in  which  I  have 
used  it  with  reference  to  the  social  character  of  the  individual  conscious- 
'  Florentine  Painters,  pp.  3-12. 

^  I      «  Theory  of  the  Moral  Sentiments,  Sec.  i,  chap.  i. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  77 

ness.  From  this  point  of  view  the  work  of  art  is  the  carrier,  the  go-between, 
in  the  communication  of  the  experience  of  the  artist  to  his  public.  As  stand- 
ing for  a  large  number  of  reactions,  bound  together  in  an  emotional  whole, 
it  is  a  center  of  social  radiations,  of  suggestions,  and  as  such  touches  off  a 
variety  of  responses.  This  high  social  potentiality  has  also  a  sort  of  resur- 
gent effect  upon  the  artist,  heightening  the  emotional  tone  of  the  original 
experience.  It  is  because  the  work  of  art  binds  together  in  itself  so  many 
tendencies  ripe  for  discharge  and  held  together  by  mutual  reinforcement 
that  its  suggestiveness  is  so  intense  and  stirs  a  mass  of  similar  tendencies 
in  others,  putting  them  into  the  social  attitude.  Tolstoi  tiius  describes 
what  he  calls  the  "infectiousness"  of  art. 

The  receiver  of  a  true  artistic  impression  is  so  united  to  the  artist  that  he  feels 
as  if  the  work  were  his  own  and  not  someone  else's — as  if  what  it  expresses  were 
just  what  he  had  long  been  wishing  to  express.  A  real  work  of  art  destroys  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  receiver  the  separation  between  himself  and  the  artist; 
nor  that  alone,  but  also  between  himself  and  all  whose  minds  receive  this  work  of 
art.  In  this  freeing  of  our  personality  from  its  separation  and  isolation,  in  this 
uniting  it  with  others,  lies  the  chief  characteristic  and  the  great  attractive  force 
of  art.' 

Far  as  such  a  statement  is  from  being  an  adequate  account  of  the  aesthe- 
tic or  from  explaining  the  mechanism  of  this  process  of  "infection,"  it  calls 
attention  eloquently  to  the  significant  part  played  by  the  aesthetic,  espe- 
cially in  its  developed  form  as  a  work  of  art,  in  enlarging  and  deepening 
the  social  consciousness.  The  function  of  art  in  society  is  only  just  now 
coming  to  be  investigated,  although  it  has  been  heralded  by  such  prophets 
as  Ruskin,  Wagner,  Morris,  and  Tolstoi.  Whatever  is  potent  in  social- 
izing consciousness  is  certainly  worthy  of  regard  from  all  those  who  hope 
for  a  better  and  a  richer  life  for  both  society  and  the  individual. 

We  are  now  at  a  point  where  we  can  return  with  profit  to  the  aesthetic 
categories  of  detachedness  or  non-utility,  subjectivity,  objectivity,  and 
universality.  /We  have  seen  that  the  aesthetic  experience  is  one  of  large 
comprehensiveness  and  high  value  for  consciousness.  It  represents  the 
incorporation  into  an  organized  unity  of  many  previously  achieved  co- 
ordinations or  ends.  This  totality,  this  unity,  make  it  pre-eminently  of 
the  type  of  immediate  experience.  It  does  not  fall  apart  for  him  who  is 
living  it  into  a  consideration  of  means  and  ends,  subject  or  self,  and  object 
to  be  attained.  In  it  consciousness  is  not  self-consciousness.  The  ques- 
tions, then,  of  its  utiHtarian  or  non-utilitarian  character,  its  subjectivity 
or  objectivity,  long  and  ardently  as  they  have  been  discussed,  are  hardly 

I  What  Is  Art  ?  (Crowell  ed.),  p.  153. 


78  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

valid  in  a  discussien  of  the  aesthetic  as  immediate  and  distinctive  experi- 
ence. Within  the  genuinely  aesthetic  situation  consciousness  does  not 
become  bipolar.  It  is  active,  but  integral.  There  is  no  awareness  of 
purpose,  because  there  is  no  holding  of  one  end  apart  as  something  not 
yet  attained  and  to  be  sought.  There  is  a  disposition  rather  toward  ful- 
filling many  ends  that  have  been  drawn  within  the  radius  of  the  one  situa- 
tion, have  become  constituents  of  the  single  experience.  These  many  ends, 
since  they  cannot  all  be  carried  out  simultaneously,  hold  one  another  in 
the  mutual  checking  that  characterizes  emotion.  But  since  they  do  not 
collide  or  eliminate  one  another,  they  contribute  a  high  sense  of  activity 
and  of  pleasantness  to  the  total.  The  outside  observer  and  student  of  the 
experience  can  see  that  the  experience  is  of  the  utmost  importance  in  the 
recurrent  processes  of  winning  control  over  new  situations.  It  is  highly 
purposive  from  the  point  of  view  of  both  stimulation  and  unification.  But 
recognition  of  this  is  not  a  part  of  the  conscious  experience  of  the  person  in 
the  aesthetic  attitude.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  distinction  between 
subject  and  object.  It  remains  for  the  observer,  but  is  swallowed  up  for 
the  experiencer,  if  I  may  use  the  word.  His  attention  is  engrossed  by  the 
aesthetic  object;  nothing  for  the  moment  leads  him  to  put  himself  in  any 
way  over  against  it;  the  scope  and  degree  of  the  bodily  and  mental  pro- 
cesses involved  are  registered  in  the  suffused  sense  of  vital  enhancement, 
satisfaction,  interest.  To  say  that  the  aesthetic  is  partly  subjective  because 
of  its  strong  coloring  of  pleasurable  activity  is  to  say  that  all  especially 
full  and  satisfying  experiences  are  subjective.  And  that  is  not  commonly 
admitted.  It  is,  indeed,  an  illegitimate  transfer  to  carry  over  terms  origin- 
ating in  a  purely  intellectualistic  analysis  of  the  aesthetic  to  the  description 
of  a  situation  made  up  of  predominantly  active  and  emotional  elements. 

The  fact,  to  which  Professor  Tufts  calls  attention,  that  aesthetic  pleasure 
especially  when  one  is  dealing  with  a  relatively  unfamiliar  art  field  or  art 
product,  "is  not  always  objectified,  but  ....  wavers  between  the  sub- 
jective and  the  objective,"  finds  explanation,  to  my  mind,  not  so  much  in 
the  passing  from  a  private  or  individual  to  a  social  standard  of  value,  as  in 
the  rapid  oscillation  between  an  aesthetic  and  a  non-aesthetic  or  critical 
attitude.  "I  like  it,"  instead  of  "This  is  fine,"  seems  to  indicate  a  tentative 
and  partial  identification  with  the  situation  rather  than  absorption  in  it,  a 
hesitating  comparison  of  personal  standards  with  others,  in  other  words,  an 
attitude  of  mind  that  approximates  the  reflective  rather  than  the  genuinely 
or  completely  aesthetic  attitude.^ 

The  objectivity — or,   since  that  word  is  correlative  with  subjectivity, 

I  Op.  cit.,  pp.  7,  8. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS   OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  79 

and  both  apply  to  the  disturbed  situation,  more  properly  speaking,  the 
reality — of  the  aesthetic,  is,  as  I  have  maintained,  essentially  social  in  its 
implications  and  efifects.  It  is  in  connection  with  this  social  character 
of  the  aesthetic  that  the  category  of  universality  gets  more  than  a  merely 
formal  significance.  With  reference  to  the  immediate  aesthetic  situation 
or  experience,  the  term  may  be  used  to  cover  all  the  social  possibilities  and 
opportunities  latent  in  the  aesthetic,  the  sense  of  communion  and  communi- 
cability  that  it  carries  with  it.  But  in  the  experience  itself  the  "judgment 
of  universality"  is  emotional,  not  reflective.  In  any  formulated  intellec- 
tual statement,  this  judgment  is,  of  course,  the  product  of  subsequent 
aesthetic  criticism,  looking  at  the  results  of  the  immediate  experience.  And 
even  in  this  case  it  does  not  involve  a  belief  that  the  aesthetic  experience 
will  be  participated  in  necessarily  by  all  who  come  within  the  range  of 
"infection." 

A  brief  statement  and  criticism  may  conveniently  be  made  at  this  point 
of  the  various  modem  theories  of  the  aesthetic  experience  already  mentioned 
in  this  discussion.     The  standpoint  of  them  all  is  implicitly  or  avowedly 

I  *^\  social,  as  I  have  used  the  term,  although  some  of  them  seem  to  confuse 
the  results  of  the  experience  with  the  experience  itself — the  fallacy  referred 
to  at  the  beginning  of  this  section.     They  are  all,  furthermore,  distinc- 

I  -ft  Itively  psychological  as  opposed  to  philosophical  or  "metaphysical;"  and 
"  uphold  with  greater  or  less  vigor  the  "activity"  position,  though  they 
derive  it,  so  far  as  I  can  make  out,  from  biological  considerations  rather 
than  from  any  consistently  functional  view  of  psychology  in  general.  That 
is,  they  do  not  bring  out  the  essentially  reconstructive  character  of  experi- 
ence, and  are  inclined  to  look  upon  the  aesthetic  object  as  a  bare  "given." 
They  are  divided  into  two  groups,  according  to  whether  they  make  the 
expression  of  emotion  or  certain  types  of  activity  predominant  in  their 
explanation  of  the  aesthetic  experience.  This  is,  however,  a  dijBference  of 
stress  rather  than  an  absolute  difference  in  theory.  Another  type  of  theory 
affiliating  with  both  these  views  is  that  represented  by  the  characterization 
of  the  aesthetic  as  "conscious  self-illusion"  or  "as  self-exhibition." 

The  "expression  of  emotion"  theories,  as  put  forth  by  Bosanquet, 
Marshall,  and  Him,  alike  mean  by  "expression"  far  more  than  mere 
discharge,  mere  draining  off  of  a  mass  of  indeterminate  reactions.  They 
assume  an  organization,  an  objectification  of  the  emotion.  We  attach  it 
to  an  object  with  which  we  become  temporarily  identified.  Bosanquet 
thus  describes  the  aesthetic  experience. 

In  proportion  as  through  continued  attention  we  are  seized  by  the  special 
delight  or  emotion  which  the  perception  in  question  has  power  to  produce,  .... 


^ 


8o  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

we  depart  from  the  attitude  of  the  mere  spectator,  and  assume  that  of  the  mind 
which  is  impelled  to  expression  and  utterance,  the  mind  of  the  "maker."  That  is 
to  say,  we  no  longer  feel  ourselves  in  face  of  the  presentation  as  something  given 
ab  extra,  but  rather  enter  into  it  as  something  which  embodies  for  us  the  emotion 
that  craves  utterance.  This  emotion,  of  course,  the  presentation  has  itself  in 
the  commonest  instances  occasioned.  But  none  the  less,  when  we  enjoy  it  fully, 
we  seem  to  have  made  the  presentation  transparent  and  organic  through  and 
through.^ 

Here  we  have  a  strong  suggestion  of  the  aesthetic  as  an  active,  constructive 
experience.  Bosanquet  saysjnothing  directly  of  the  origin  of  the  aesthetic 
nor  of  its  social  nature,  but  he  may  be  said  to  hint  at  its  social  side,  in  one 
sense  at  least,  when  he  says: 

Much  of  the  foregoing  argument  ....  could  be  summed  up  by  saying  that 
aesthetic  emotion  is  "impersonal."  But  the  word  is  a  dangerous  one  ....  I 
should  prefer  to  borrow  the  expression  of  a  recent  writer  on  a  different  subject, 
and  call  it  "super-personal."  In  becoming  aesthetic,  emotion  does  not  become 
something  less,  but  something  more;  it  does  not  forfeit  the  depth  of  personality, 
but  only  throws  oflf  its  narrowness,  and  modifies  it  by  an  enlargement  which  is  also 
a  reinforcement.* 

This  objectification  of  an  emotion  Bosanquet  calls  "expression  for  expres- 
sion's sake" — a  phrase  which  strikes  me  as  misleading  in  two  ways;  first, 
as  not  differentiating  aesthetic  emotion  from  other  types,  and,  second, 
as  hinting  at  a  conscious  purpose  inhering  in  the  experience.  But  this 
may  be  reading  into  it  difficulties  that  are  not  there. 

Both  Marshall  and  Hirn  ground  the  aesthetic  experience  upon  a 
so-called  "aesthetic  instinct"  or  "impulse."  Marshall  calls  it  the  impulse 
to  attract  through  the  pleasing  of  others.3     Hirn  says: 

The  art  impulse  in  its  broadest  sense  must  be  taken  as  an  outcome  of  the 
natural  tendency  of  every  feeling-state  to  manifest  itself  externally,  the  effect  of  such 
a  manifestation  being  to  heighten  the  pleasure  and  to  relieve  the  pain.  We  found 
in  this  fact  the  prunary  source  of  art  as  an  individual  impulse.  But  art  is  essen- 
tially social  ....  The  secondary  effect  of  the  exteriorization  of  a  feeling -state 
is  to  awaken  similar  feelings  in  other  human  beings  who  perceive  the  manifestation 
and  their  sympathetic  feeling  acts  upon  the  author  of  the  original  manifestation, 
heightening  in  him  the  feeling-state  which  gave  rise  to  it.* 

In  both  these  statements  we  find  a  social  reference, ) more  explicit  in 
Hirn.    Just  what  Marshall  means  by  a  "blind  impulse"  to  attract  by 
I  "On  the  Nature  of  Aesthetic  Emotion,"  Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  155. 
a  Ibid.,  p.  165. 

3  Pain,  Pleasure,  and  Aesthetics,  pp.  100,  102-4. 

4  The  Origins  of  Art,  p.  302. 


UNIVERSITY 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  8 1 

pleasing — for  he  is  careful  to  insist  that  there  is  no  forecast  of  the  end — 
it  is  impossible  for  me  to  make  out.  The  phrasing  seems  to  necessitate 
the  presence  of  some  dim  idea  of  the  end.  Without  it  the  tendency  in  ques- 
tion reduces  itself  to  a  general  impulse  toward  sociality,  toward  human 
intercourse,  and  the  statement  apparently  means  that  such  impulses  are 
agreeable.  I  cannot  acquit  Marshall  of  a  confusion  here  between  the 
immediate  experience  and  subsequent  analysis  of  that  experience.  And 
if  his  statement  has  at  all  the  meaning  that  I  have  read  into  it,  the  impulse 
to  attract  by  pleasing  lies  at  the  root  of  all  social  organization  and  produc- 
tion, and  cannot  therefore  be  said  to  be  peculiarly  aesthetic.  Marshall 
sets  up  a  criterion  in  his  definition  of  the  aesthetic  as  ''the  relatively 
permanently  pleasurable  in  revival."^  This  is,  of  course,  a  distinction 
legitimately  made  from  the  observer's  standpoint.  It  may  perhaps  be 
taken  as  equivalent  to  the  criterion  of  objectivity  as  understood  by  San- 
tayana,  or  translated  into  our  formula  of  the  establishment  of  a  complex 
co-ordination,  the  attainment  of  an  extraordinary  depth  and  width  of  con- 
trol.    But  this  imports  into  it  assumptions  that  Marshall  does  not  consider. 

Hirn's  "art  impulse"  may  also  be  criticized  as  too  broad  to  serve  as 
\  the  origin  of  one  particular  type  of  experience.  The  tendency  of  feeling- 
states  to  seek  an  outlet  is  fundamental  in  all  organisms  of  any  degree  of 
complexity,  and  an  account  of  the  various  ways  in  which  such  discharge 
is  deflected  and  mediated  is  an  account  of  all  the  forms  of  mental  activity. 
Hirn  himself  recognizes  this,  but  maintains  that  art  best  serves  and  satis- 
fies this  impulse,  which  seems  to  me  another  question.*  From  the  posi- 
tion that  I  am  seeking  to  maintain,  any  such  derivation  of  the  aesthetic 
experience  from  a  special  primordial  "aesthetic  impulse"  is  unnecessary 
and  even  misleading.  The  aesthetic  represents  a  certain  degree  and  kind 
of  co-operation  among  various  activities ;  it  does  not  derive  from  any  one 
type;  and  it  represents  an  advanced  and  not  a  primitive  kind  of  reaction. 

Hirn,  furthermore,  tends  to  think  of  pleasure  and  pain  as  directly 
causal  rather  than  as  accompaniments  of  certain  forms  of  activity,  and 
fails  to  assign  them  to  a  distinct  place  and  function  within  the  total  act.3 
In  describing  the  communication  of  the  externalized  feeling-state  to  others, 
and  its  reflection  from  them  back  into  the  consciousness  of  the  individual 
first  experiencing  the  emotion,  he  makes  use  of  the  theories  of  "inner 
imitation"  as  the  mechanism  for  the  spread  of  the  feeUng  and  its  resiir- 
gence  upon  its  originator,  thus  borrowing  from  the  upholders  of  the  activity 

I  Op.  ciL,  p.  355- 
="  Op.  cit.,  p.  73. 
3  Ibid.,  chap.  iii. 


82  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

theories.^  I  do  not  find  that  Hirn  states  anywhere  that  the  social  reaction 
upon  the  original  feeling  may  come  to  be  an  essential  part  associatively 
and  imaginatively  in  the  further  aesthetic  experiences  of  the  artist,  and 
not  remain  only  an  actual  secondary  effect.  But  he  makes  the  social 
response  and  enhancement  essential  to  the  genuine  aesthetic  experience; 
and  dwells  upon  the  "cathartic"  and  controlling  effect  of  such  objectifica- 
tion.2  Hirn's  treatment  of  the  problem  of  the  aesthetic  experience  is, 
on  the  whole,  the  most  fresh  and  suggestive  of  recent  years;  and  makes 
illuminating  use  of  anthropologic  and  genetic  material. 

The  activity  theories  are  represented  by  the  Germans  Karl  Groos  and 
Theodor  Lipps  and  their  followers,  who  advance  respectively  the  theories 
of  inner  imitation,  innere  Nachahmung,  and  Einfuhlung,  for  which  no 
^  \  satisfactory  English  equivalent  has  been  found,  but  which  means  literally 
-  '  a  '*feeling-into"  a  thing.  The  general  position  of  both  was  anticipated 
incidentally  by  many  of  the  older  writers  on  aesthetics,  but  lacked  psycho- 
logical and  experimental  confirmation.  Of  recent  years  it  has  been  taken 
independently  by  two  art  critics,  Vernon  Lee  and  Bernhard  Berenson  in 
their  case  applied  only  to  the  space  arts.  The  main  contention  of  these 
theories  I  have  already  set  forth.  Both  lay  chief  stress  on  the  activities 
excited  in  the  appreciation  of  an  aesthetic  object.  Groos  emphasizes  the 
actual  reproduction  in  the  spectator  of  the  movements  entering  into  the 
-  I  construction  or  the  manipulation  of  the  object.  These  movements  take 
-  '  place,  for  the  most  part,  in  reduced  form  within  the  body,  as  "organic 
movements,"  although  frequently  externalized,  as  in  keeping  time  to  music, 
involuntarily  assuming  the  postures  taken  by  an  actor  or  a  statue.  He 
recognizes  that  tendencies  to  movement  may  be  excited  through  images  of 
similar  movements  of  our  own  in  the  past;  but  he  holds  that  associations 
alone  are  not  sufficient  to  account  for  our  lively  sense  of  co-operation  with 
the  object  in  the  aesthetic  experience,  amounting  in  many  cases  to  com- 
plete temporary  identification  with  it.  He  calls  this  actual  internal  sym- 
pathetic movement  imitation,  although  he  admits  that  it  is  not  literal,  but 
only  abbreviated  and  symbolic  representation. 3 

Lipps's  theory  of  Einfuhlung,  or  aesthetic  sympathy,  differs  from 
Groos' s  theory  of  "inner  imitation"  more  in  the  way  of  emphasis  than 
'  through  any  actual  unlikeness  of  position,  at  least  so  far  as  the  unenlight- 
ened reader  can  tell.    The  two  men  have,  however,  asserted  their  points 

'  Op.  cit.,  chap.  vi. 
»  Ibid.,  chaps.,  iv,  viii. 

3  The  Play  of  Man  (translated  by  E.  L.  Baldwin),  pp.  322-31;    Der  aesthetische 
Genuss,  chap.  v. 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  83 

of  difference  with  true  German  copiousness  and  minuteness.  Lipps 
insists  upon  the  immediate  identification  of  the  beholder  with  the  thing 
beheld,  the  aesthetic  object,  an  entering  into  its  life  and  activity  with  a 
vividness  and  actuality  comparable  to  what  would  be  felt  if  the  center  of 
interest  were  in  one's  person.  He  admits  fully  that  the  ability  to  enter 
into  such  sympathetic  relations  with  the  aesthetic  object  is  dependent  on 
rj^l  our  own  experiences  of  similar  activities;  but  makes  the  essence  of  the 
►  ~  matter  the  immediate  and  unreflective  objectification  and  transfer  of  the 
sense  of  activity.  There  is  absolutely  no  recognition,  he  says,  of  the  activity 
as  mine,  as  located  in  my  body ;  it  cannot,  therefore,  justly  be  called  inner 
imitation.  It  is  the  momentary  living  of  the  life  of  the  thing  with  which 
I  am  in  aesthetic  relations.  He  further  maintains  that  the  "stuff"  of  this 
transferred  experience  is  primarily  neither  sensations  nor  images  of  organic 
movements,  but  rather  the  activity  of  the  will,  Willenshandlung,  the  con- 
sciousness of  ''inner  experience"  or  Tun.  "Das  'Tun,'"  he  says,  "ist 
uberall  an  sich  ein  rein  inneres  Erlebnis.  Und  es  ist  uberall  dasselbe 
innere  Erlebnis."  To  take  up  the  view  of  the  will  here  imported  into  the 
discussion  is,  of  course,  entirely  outside  of  our  purpose.  Lipps  agrees 
with  Berenson  that  the  human  form  is  the  most  directly  stimulating  to 
our  sense  of  life,  the  occasion  of  the  most  complete  Einfuhlung,  and  there- 
fore of  the  fullest  aesthetic  experience.  "Man  is  not  beautiful,"  he  says, 
"because  of  his  form.  The  human  form  is  beautiful  because  it  is  to  us 
the  carrier  of  human  life.'"' 

While  neither  of  these  theories  makes  much  of  the  emotional  or  the 
social  aspects  of  the  aesthetic  experience,  they  both  imply  them.  Lipps, 
particularly,  with  his  insistence  upon  the  engrossment  of  the  experiencer  in 
the  aesthetic  object,  the  unity  of  the  aesthetic  experience  vividly  described 
what  we  have  called  the  "pause  of  satisfaction,"  and  reveals,  perhaps 
unintentionally,  its  social  character  and  potentialities. 
*  J  ''  Baldwin's  "  self -exhibition "  theory  is  given  cursory  treatment  in  his 
Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  and  disclaims  adequacy.*  He  brings 
the  aesthetic  experience  under  his  general  doctrine  of  imitation,  in  which, 
as  is  well  known,  he  includes  the  phenomena  of  growth,  accommodation, 
as  well  as  of  habit.  The  urgent  tendency  of  a  new  accommodation,  he 
says,  is  to  complete  itself  in  an  act.  This  is  the  self -exhibition  impulse,  the 
constructive  or  creative  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  individual.  Such 
exhibition,  however,  does  not  become  the  work  of  art,  according  to  Baldwin, 
until  it  has  received  social  confirmation,  acceptance,  and  approbation 
I  Grundlegung  der  Aesthetik,  p.  105;  cf.  whole  discussion  of  £i»/tlW«ng,  pp.  96-223. 
'  Pp.  147-53- 


84  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

by  others.y  He  does  not  tell  us  the  character  of  this  social  confirmation  or 
judgment,  nor  how  it  is  reflected  back  into  the  original  activity.  There 
seems  here  the  ambiguity  that  lurks  in  the  position  of  Him.  The  social 
element  is  made  subsequent,  not  integral.  Moreover,  the  self-exhibiting 
impulse  is  for  Baldwin  a  part  of  all  accommodations  and  inventions;  and 
the  social  judgment  is  the  test  of  their  success  or  failure.  )  His  theory 
accordingly,  so  far  as  developed,  offers  apparently  no  criterion  for  the  dis- 
crimination of  the  aesthetic  from  other  types  of  invention.  He  does,  indeed, 
say  that  "aesthetic  inventions  are  new  dispositions  of  thought  viewed  as  a 
arousing  emotion  and  sentiment,"  thus  indicating  the  emotional  aspects 
of  the  question.  But  he  does  not  enlarge  upon  this.  His  theory  serves 
merely  to  call  attention  to  the  activity  and  social  sides  of  the  aesthetic 
experience. 

Lange's  "conscious  self-illusion"  theory  may  be  dismissed  with  a  1*^ 
few  words.  He  asserts  that  in  the  aesthetic  experience  there  are  simul- 
taneously present  in  consciousness  two  different  contents  or  ideas — one  of 
the  actuality  of  the  aesthetic  appearance,  or  Schein,  the  other  that  it  is, 
after  all,  only  illusion,  Tduschung,  a  human  construction.  If  the  illusion 
of  actuality  were  complete,  he  says,  we  should  be  in  positive  error;  but 
since  we  recognize  that  the  presentation  is  Schein,  the  experience  has  the 
character  of  playful  rather  than  of  serious  illusion.  He  points  out  the 
element  of  illusion  in  non-aesthetic  experiences,  and  makes  the  awareness 
of  it  while  having  the  experience  the  criterion  of  the  aesthetic.  Lange's 
characterization  of  consciousness  as  dual  in  the  aesthetic  moment  is  hard  to 
reconcile  with  the  position  taken  by  modem  psychology  as  to  the  unity  and 
immediacy  of  the  aesthetic  consciousness.  What  he  probably  means  to 
indicate  is  that  we  do  not  confuse  our  aesthetic  identification  with  an  object, 
with  actual  external  putting  ourselves  into  its  place,  participating  in  its 
activities.  To  use  Lipps's  illustration,  when  we  enter  aesthetically  into 
the  experiences  of  the  trapeze  performer  or  of  the  dancer,  we  do  not  actually 
believe  that  we  are  swinging  on  the  trapeze  or  dancing,.  To  point  out 
this  fact  is  merely  to  assert  that  the  aesthetic  is  an  independent  experience, 
having  its  own  "coefficient  of  recognition."  Otherwise  we  could  not 
discuss  it  any  more  than  we  could  discuss  memories  and  images  if  we  could 
not  distinguish  them  from  the  perceptual  experiences  out  of  which  they 
arose.  In  any  other  sense  than  this  the  discrimination  of  two  ideas  in  the 
aesthetic  experience  involves  the  psychologist's  fallacy  of  reading  back 
into  the  immediate  situation  the  distinctions  reflectively  analyzed  out  of  it. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  a  prevailing  character  of  the  aesthetic  is  its 
instabiUty,  the  rapidity  with  which  one  shifts  from  the  aesthetic  into  the 


SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  85 

reflective  attitude,  and  becomes  aware  of  the  "illusion."  But  such 
moments  of  criticism  do  not  belong  in  any  true  sense  to  the  aesthetic 
experience  itself,  which  is  an  absorption  in  the  total  situation  without 
characterizing  it  as  either  real  or  not  real.  Lange's  recognition  of  the 
presence  of  Schein  in  non-aesthetic  experiences  seems  to  show  that  he 
looks  upon  all  presentations  as  constructions  rather  than  as  mere  "givens." 
He  practically  makes  it  equivalent  to  the  apperceptive  or  ideational 
aspect  of  all  perception.  But  how  far  he  would  subscribe  to  this  I  do  not 
know.^ 

His  characterization  of  the  bewusste  SelbsUduschung  in  the  aesthetic 
as  playful  aligns  Lange  with.  Groos  in  his  famous  "play  theory"  of  the 
aesthetic.  First  suggested  in  an  aesthetic  connection  by  Schiller,;  as  is  well 
known,  and  given  a  scientific  basis  by  Spencer,  the  theory  of  play  in  gen- 
eral has  received  great  reinforcement  and  confirmation  through  Groos's 
view  that  play  is  not  a  result  merely  of  surplus  energy,  a  sort  of  evolutionary 
by-product,  as  Spencer  held,  but  a  valuable  life-function,  preserved  through 
natural  selection  to  afford  preliminary  exercise  and  development  of  responses 
useful  in  later  life.  Valuable  as  this  change  of  basis  is  for.  the  explanation 
of  play  in  general,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  aesthetic  can  be  brought 
under  such  a  generalization,/ if,  indeed,  it  wholly  accounts  for  adult  play. 
Groos,  however,  stretches  his  definition  of  play.  "When  an  act  is  per- 
formed solely  because  of  the  pleasure  it  affords,  there  is  play."*  But  this 
seems  to  set  up  pleasure  as  an  outside  end,  and  involves  us  in  the  traditional 
hedonistic  ambiguities  as  well  as  detracting  from  the  spontaneous  char- 
acter of  play  as  an  inherited  impulse.  It  is  in  their  common  spontaneity, 
freedom  from  compulsion,  engrossment  in  the  present  situation,  that  Groos 
finds  his  reasons  for  identifying  play  and  the  aesthetic  experience.  Both 
involve  Schein,  illusion;  but  in  many  kinds  of  play  and  in  the  fullest  aes- 
thetic experience  the  temporary  participation  in  the  experience  is  entire  and 
genuine.  Groos  also  points  out  the  social  nature  and  value  of  play  as 
fostering  the  impulses  toward  association  and  communication,  and  as 
supplying  a  basis  for  serious  social  co-operation  in  later  life.  He  also 
touches  upon  the  social  significance  of  art,  although  he  asserts  that  it  is 
through  its  social  aims  that  art  diverges  from  play.  Here,  of  course  he 
brings  in  his  inner  imitation  as  a  mechanism.  He  appears  to  find  the  social 
element  in  the  aesthetic  in  the  conscious  aim  of  attracting  others,  and 
subscribes  to  Baldwin's  self-exhibition  theory. 

1  Die  bewusste  SelbsUduschung  als  Kern  des  kunstlerischen  Genusses  (1895);  Das 
Wesen  der  Kunst  (1901),  especially  chap.  viii. 

2  The  Play  of  Man,  pp.  394,  395. 


86  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

One  remark  thrown  out  by  Groos  strikes  me  as  particularly  sane  and 
particularly  pertinent  to  our  discussion  of  the  aesthetic.  He  says  that  in 
considering  the  origins  of  play  it  is  not  necessary  to  assume  a  special  play 
instinct.  There  are,  rather,  a  large  number  of  instincts,  impulses  to  act 
in  a  particular  way  toward  specific  stimulations,  all  of  which  may  be  exer- 
cised playfully.^  We  may  borrow  from  this  support  for  our  view  that 
the  presumption  is  in  favor  of  there  being  no  one  primordial  "aesthetic 
instinct,"  such  as  Hirn  and  Marshall  assume.  The  truth  seems  rather 
to  be  that  our  whole  equipment  of  instincts,  impulses,  and  organized 
responses* may  under  appropriate  conditions  contribute  to  the  aesthetic 
experience.^  To  my  mind,  play  and  the  aesthetic  are  alike  chiefly  because 
both  are  modes  of  immediate  experience.  I  find  it,  however,  truer  to 
fact  to  say  that  play  may  become  aesthetic  than  to  say  that  the  aesthetic  is  a 
kind  of  play.  I;  The  aesthetic  marks  a  certain  stage  and  kind  of  organiza- 
tion in  any  experience.  It  cannot  therefore  be  identified  with  any  one 
particular^type  of  experience.  In  successful  play  there  are  undoubtedly 
aesthetic  aspects  and  moments;  but  it  does  not  ordinarily  rise  to  a  high 
aesthetic^level.^^The  activities  involved  are  too  few,  the  co-ordinations  too 
incomplete,  the  responses  too  much  of  the  serial  character. 

I  ThejPlay  of_Man,  pp.  377,  378. 


k 


PART  III 

SPECIFIC  AESTHETIC  CATEGORIES  AND  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC 
EXPERIENCE 

I.      THE  SPECIFIC  AESTHETIC  CATEGORIES 

In  this  part  I  do  not  undertake  to  suggest  solutions  of  the  many  specific 
problems  falling  under  the  general  rubric  of  aesthetics.  My  purpose  is 
rather  to  point  out  the  locus  of  these  specific  problems  in  the  account 
^already  given.  Even  the  broadest  survey  of  the  field  of  aesthetics  cannot 
afford  to  ignore  entirely  the  time-honored  categories  of  unity  in  variety, 
symmetry,  proportion,  harmony,  rhythm,  economy,  the  characteristic,  and 
the  rest  of  the  train;  nor  such  distinctive  aspects  of  the  aesthetic  as  the 
beautiful,  the  ugly,  the  sublime,  the  tragic,  and  the  comic.  Quail  as  one 
may  before  their  portentous  backing  of  controversial  Uterature,  one  is  com- 
pelled to  fit  a  pebble  into  the  sling  and  have  at  them.  If  by  so  doing  I 
reinforce  my  general  position,  I  shall  be  entirely  satisfied.  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  discuss,  except  in  the  most  incidental  way,  the  peculiar  aesthe- 
tic quality  of  the  various  concrete  arts — music,  painting,  sculpture,  archi- 
tecture, etc. — although  each  sets  its  own  problems,  and  offers  an  alluring 
field  of  investigation.  _    _ 

The  most  cursory  examination  of^tHe^  aesthetic  categories  reveals  the 
fact  that  they  have  accumulated  in  ^  haphazard  fashion,  and  represent 
widely  different  lines  of  approach.  The  so-called  "formal  categories'""' 
are  obviously  derived  from  a  study  of  the  work  of  art  rather  than  of  the 
aesthetic  experience.  They  are  logical,  not  psychological,  having  to  do 
with  the  product  apart  from  the  process.  /  Some  are  drawn  from  one  art  ^ 
form,  some  from  another.  Thus,  symmetry,  balance,  and  proportion 
suggest  most  directly  the  "space  arts;"  rhythm  and  harmony,  the  "time 
arts."  Another  set  of  terms,  more  recent  in  the  literature  of  the  aesthetic, 
shows  the  attempt  to  analyze  the  immediate  aesthetic  situation.  Here 
belong  economy,  restraint,  novelty  in  familiarity,  "the  characteristic," 
"the  significant,"  some  referring  to  the  total  effect  with  emphasis  upon 
the  content  side,  some  to  the  modes  of  producing  it.  Modern  psychology 
is  seeking  to  subject  the  phenomena  underlying  both  sets  of  terms  to 
investigation  and  to  experimental  verification.  But  the  complexity  and 
the  notorious  elusiveness  of  the  aesthetic  experience  render  such  procedure 
slow  and  difficult.  In  the  use  of  these  terms  there  is  considerable  over- 
lapping.   Some  are  but  different  names  for  the  same  phenomena. 

87 


^o 


|yiila; 


88  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

The  two  terms  most  widely  and  continuously  used  in  discussions  of  the 
'^aesthetic  have  been  "unity"  and  ''variety."  The  aesthetic  object,  it  is 
said,  always  involves  unity  in  variety.  The  aesthetic  experience  is  aware- 
i^ness  of  such  unity  in  variety.  Without  further  limitation,  such  statement 
means  nothing  even  as  description  of  the  aesthetic,  for  it  applies  equally 
well  to  any  sort  of  organized  and  objectified  experience.  Moreover,  we  have 
come  to  recognize  that  in  any  connection  either  term  by  itself  stands  for 
an  unthinkable  situation.  Mere  empty  unity  is  as  impossible  as  mere  brute 
variety.  To  be  aware  of  unity  is  to  be  aware  of  the  unity  of  something;  to 
be  aware  of  variety  is  to  be  aware  of  it  as  embodied  in  a  concrete  something, 
and  thus  within  the  grasp  of  unity.  In  terms  of  control,  unity  emphasizes 
the  achievement  of  control,  something  that  we  can  deal  with  as  a  total; 
variety  emphasizes  the  various  materials  used  and  stages  gone  through  in 
the  process  of  achieving  that  control.  Control  means  co-ordination,  organi- 
zation. It  necessarily  connotes  things  brought  together.  Unity  represents 
the  end;  variety  the  means  available  for  bringing  about  that  end.  Both 
notions  emerge  as  objects  of  thought  only  in  a  distvurbed  situation.  They 
re  categories  of  reflective,  not  of  immediate,  experience.  It  is  entirely 
true,  however,  that  reflective  analysis  of  particular  unity-in- variety  situations 
will  bring  to  light  different  component  parts  and  different  arrangements 
of  the  content  in  which  we  read  off  these  terms.  The  content  and  pattern 
of  one  unity-in-variety  situation  may  be  meager,  of  another  rich.  There 
are  all  degrees  and  kinds  of  unity  in  variety.  Just  what  they  are  is  the 
problem  of  the  distinctive  types  of  concrete  experience. 

One  kind  of  unity  in  variety  we  undoubtedly  find  in  the  aesthetic 
experience  when  we  subject  it  to  analysis.     Beyond  such  analysis  much  aes- 
thetic theory  has  not  gone;   and  it  gives  us    the  various  aesthetic  cate- 
fgories  read  off  in  terms  of  unity  in  variety.    If  we  keep  in  mind  that  neither 
group  is  really  understandable  without  the  other,  we  may  safely  say  that 
the  formal  categories  fall  into  two  groups,  according  as  they  lay  chief  stress 
_  on  the  concept  of  unity  or  on  the  concept  of  variety.     Ancient  thought  was 
more  impressed  with  the  unity  of  the  work  of  art.    Modern  thought,  finding 
a  richer  content  in  its  art  products  and  taking  more  interest  in  processes, 
Hn  activity,  has  dwelt  on  the  concept  of  variety.    Into  the  first  group  fall 
such  categories  as  symmetry,  proportion,  balance,  harmony,  simplicity; 
into  the  second,  such  categories  as  order,  rhythm,  contrast,  reconciliation 
'|sOf  opposites.     One  group  calls  attention  to  the  total  effect,  the  wholeness, 
^completeness,  togetherness,  of  the  aesthetic  object  as  apprehended  in  the 
aesthetic  experience;  the  other  calls  attention  to  its  richness,  fulness,  intri- 
[  cacy  of  subordinate  arrangement.     We  may  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  atten- 


SPECIFIC   AESTHETIC  CATEGORIES  89 

\   tion  to  one  aspect  will  give  us  a  predominating  sense  of  relief,  repose — the 
"cathartic"  effect  of  the  aesthetic;  the  other  will  give  us  a  predominating 
^  sense  of  enhancement  of  life,  of  stimulation. 

But  we  no  sooner  get  the  two  sets  of  categories  apart  for  the  sake  of 
descriptive  convenience  than  we  have  to  bring  them  together  again  in 
discussing  any  one  of  them.  All  the  terms  that  we  have  ranged  under 
unity  obviously  mean  nothing  more  than  a  certain  disposition  within  the 
whole,  of  the  constituent  elements  revealed  to  analysis.  Symmetry,  for 
instance,  means  a  certain  mutual  interrelation  of  parts  giving  a  specific  char- 
acter to  the  whole.  The  same  thing  holds  true  of  the  other  categories  of 
unity.  They  must  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  the  categories  of  variety. 
On  the  side  of  variety,  the  specific  categories  are  even  more  dependent  upon 
the  concept  of  unity,  allying  themselves  with  one  or  another  of  its  categories. 
Thus  order  becomes  a  term  of  aesthetic  significance,  not  merely  when 
thought  of  as  order  of  parts  with  reference  to  a  whole — it  has  no  meaning 
whatever  apart  from  that  —  but  as  order  of  a  particular  kind,  arrange- 
ment according  to  a  pattern,  involving  symmetry,  harmony,  proportion, 
etc.  Contrast,  too,  is  always  within  a  whole.  There  is  no  possibility 
of  it  for  consciousness  between  two  things  that  are  not  in  some  sort  of 
relation.  But  in  itself  it  does  not  make  an  experience  aesthetic.  There 
are  all  sorts  of  non-aesthetic  contrasts.  Again  there  must  be  co-operating 
and  defining  factors  of  balance,  symmetry,  etc.  Rhythm  is  the  most 
definitely  aesthetic  of  the  single  categories  I  have  named  as  falling  under 
the  concept  of  variety,  and  plays  an  increasingly  important  part  in  the 
literature  of  aesthetic  theory.  It,  too,  of  course,  has  meaning  only  with 
reference  to  a  whole;  and  even  it  names  an  experience  that,  unless  it  con- 
forms to  certain  conditions,  is  likely  to  become  monotonous  and  positively 
displeasing  aesthetically.  All  this  merely  goes  to  show  that  to  treat  these 
categories  in  isolation,  and  aside  from  further  investigation  of  specific 
aesthetic  situations,  is  a  profitless  shuflBing  of  counters,  leading  to  no  real 
explanation  and  likely  to  entangle  in  barren  discussion  of  the  relation  of 
the  One  to  the  Many.  The  aesthetic  experience,  at  its  best,  is  highly  con- 
crete and  distinctive,  with  a  solid  core  in  the  aesthetic  object;  and  the 
categories  find  their  point  of  attachment  and  their  chance  for  elucidation 
within  it  and  not  in  abstraction  from  it. 

This  concrete  aesthetic  experience  I  have  described  as  the  embrace 
within  one  comprehensive  co-ordination  of  a  large  group  of  synchronous 
minor  activities.  Under  such  conditions  the  unity  attained  and  felt  is 
active,  functional,  not  passive,  static.  Within  the  area  of  organization 
there  is  a  constant  shift  and  play  of  activity,  and  a  corresponding  sense 


^A 


90  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

of  interest,  fulness,  life.  The  large  co-ordination  is  exceedingly  delicate, 
and  is  able  to  maintain  itself  only  through  constant  tensions  and  resolu- 
tions, changes  and  compensations,  among  the  various  motor  elements 
involved.  The  more  elaborate  such  a  system  of  balanced  forces,  the 
more  delicate  the  equilibrium  and  the  greater  the  necessity  for  continual 
redistribution  of  strains.  It  is  impossible  to  avoid  using  physical  terms 
here,  though  in  dealing  with  psychical  matters  they  are  employed  figura- 
tively rather  than  literally.  The  aesthetic  situation  as  a  whole  may  persist 
for  a  considerable  length  of  time;  but  it  does  so,  not  as  a  static  whole,  but 
by  virtue  of  a  series,  or  many  interwoven  series,  of  compensations  and  sub- 
stitutions. 

It  is  in  terms  of  these  combinations  and  redistributions,  these  various 
tensions  and  relaxations,  that  the  categories  of  unity  and  variety  must  be 
interpreted,  if  they  are  to  have  any  genuine  value  for  aesthetic  theory.  - 

With  regard  to  the  character  of  the  activities  thus  contributing  to  the 
experience  as  a  whole,  we  can,  at  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  say  no 
more  than  that  they  comprise,  with  little  doubt,  the  established  organic 
rhythms  of  breathing,  heart-beat,  fatigue  and  recuperation,  making  up 
normally  the  remoter  fringe  of  any  consciousness,  the  more  obscure  physi- 
ological rhythms  of  innervation,  anabolis  and  katabolis,  etc.,  not  enter- 
ing into  consciousness  at  all,  and  the  psychological  rhythm  of  attention  and 
its  attendant  operations.  When  all  these  fall  into  certain  relations,  and 
reinforce  one  another,  we  have,  not  their  mere  fusion  or  summation,  but 
a  new  thing,  the  aesthetic  experience. 

This  experience,  unitary  as  it  is  for  consciousness,  not  only  represents 
an  incessant  flicker  of  change  among  its  complex  constituents,  but  also 
admits  of  diversity  in  the  character  of  those  constituents  themselves./  It 
is  matter  of  common  observation  that  experiences  which  feel  alike  may 
show  upon  examination  quite  different  elements.  It  is  the  width  and 
pattern  of  the  resultant  whole  rather  than  the  nature  of  the  particular 
minor  activities  bound  up  in  it  that  produce  the  aesthetic  situation.  And 
yet  it  is  the  differences  in  the  elements  that  at  least  partly  account  for  the 
individual  character  of  different  types  of  aesthetic  experience.  Each 
specific  experience  of  the  same  object,  in  fact,  has  its  own  tang,  the  some- 
thing about  it  that  makes  it  this  experience  and  not  the  one  before  it.  This 
is,  of  course,  only  saying  that  no  two  experiences  can  be  identical.  Other- 
wise, we  should  not  be  able  to  distinguish  them.  The  new  experience, 
has  woven  into  it  associatively  the  activities  of  the  past  experience,  and 
possesses  besides  the  fringe  of  present  sensational  processes.  This  does 
not  mean  that  they  exist  unmodified  side  by  side.     We  have  a  new  experi- 


SPECIFIC  AESTHETIC  CATEGORIES  9 1 

ence,  a  concrete  new  situation,  only  when  there  is  active  reorganization, 
when,  within  limits,  every  element  is  actively  "made  over."  By  "within 
limits  "  I  mean  nothing  more  than  that  the  experience  does  not  break  down 
as  a  whole,  become  bipolar,  and  demand  entire  reorganization.  I  am 
speaking  now  of  immediate  experiences,  of  which  the  aesthetic  is  a  type, 
in  which  the  unitary  character  is  not  lost.  The  situation  remains  for 
consciousness  an  unbroken  whole  with  a  certain  emotional  coloring,  due 
to  the  minor  readjustments  going  on  within  it. 

Each  type  of  aesthetic  experience,  such  as  listening  to  music,  looking 
at  a  picture,  following  a  drama,  or  reading  poetry,  has  its  peculiar  timbre, 
due  to  the  special  activities  involved,  the  special  emotional  reverberation. 
But  what  makes  them  all  aesthetic  is  their  feel,  and  that  is  due  to  the  way 
in  which  the  constituent  elements  are  combined  far  more  than  to  their 
character  in  themselves.  Two  experiences,  made  up  largely  of  diflferent 
elements,  may  have  approximately  the  same  feel.  This  is  roughly  illus- 
trated by  the  ease  with  which  we  translate  one  sort  of  experience  into  the 
values  of  another.  In  its  simplest  form  it  is  shown  in  "colored  hearing" 
and  other  forms  of  synaesthesia.  Aesthetically  a  sunset  may  give  us  the 
sense  of  hearing  a  piece  of  music  or  reading  a  poem.  The  emotion,  the 
mood,  aroused  is  similar.  One  often  comes  across  popular  generaliza- 
tions of  this  sort  that  indicate  more  than  mere  intellectual  comparison. 
Berenson  says  that  Michael  Angelo  is  the  Milton,  Titian  the  Shake- 
speare, of  Italian  painting.^  To  me,  Beethoven  suggests  both  Angelo  and 
Milton;  Chopin  suggests  Shelley;  Wagner,  Browning.  The  artists  and 
the  critics  justly  reprobate  such  comparisons  as  superficial  and  as  tending 
to  blur  the  essential  differences  among  the  arts.  But  from  the  side  of  the 
analysis  of  immediate  aesthetic  experiences,  they  call  attention  to  the 
common  basis  by  reason  of  which  we  call  them  all  aesthetic. 

It  is,  then,  the  possibility  of  a  large  number  of  substitutions  that  gives 
the  aesthetic  its  distinctive  character,  its  richness  and  potency.  These 
substitutions  may  be  said  to  be  of  two  sorts — the  substitution  of  one 
activity  for  another  in  successive  experiences,  and  the  mutual  substituti- 
bility  of  activities  within  any  one  manifold.  Both,  of  course,  enter  into  the 
total  effect  of  any  concrete  aesthetic  experience.  The  first  sort  I  have  just 
noted  in  the  common  emotional  tone  of  different  activity  complexes;  the 
second  is  only  another  way  of  putting  the  fact  that  the  constituents  of  any 
aesthetic  complex  support  instead  of  interfere  with  one  another.  It 
is  important  to  keep  in  mind,  moreover,  that  by  substitutibility  is  never 
meant  identity  in  a  structural  sense.  We  never  substitute  one  thing  for 
I  The  Study  and  Criticism  oj  Italian  Art,  First  Series,  p.  45. 


92  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

another  if  the  two  are  exactly  alike.  It  is  only  when  they  are  in  some 
respects  different,  but  do  the  same  work,  meet  the  same  requirements. 
It  is  this  aspect  of  the  aesthetic  that  prevents  our  tying  it  to  any  fixed  con- 
tent or  technique.  The  shores  of  the  history  of  criticism  are  strewn  with 
the  wrecks  of  such  attempts.  The  permanency  of  great  works  of  art 
depends  upon  substitution  no  less  than  does  the  creation  of  new  forms. 
Our  aesthetic  reaction  to  Greek  sculpture  or  to  Italian  painting  is  undoubt- 
edly different  from  that  of  their  contemporaries.  It  is  a  fabric  woven  of 
different  colors  and  lusters,  shot  with  different  images.  But  because  it 
also  is  wrought  of  divers  threads,  embroidered  with  divers  blended  figures, 
it  too  is  true  aesthetic  stuff  of  the  loom.  Our  sense  of  strangeness  and 
trouble  in  looking  at  a  picture  of  Manet's  or  at  a  Japanese  prinL'in  listening 
to  a  tone-poem  of  Richard  Strauss's,  means  that  as  yet  the  substitutions 
among  the  activities  aroused  are  only  partial.  Trains  of  associated  images, 
even  certain  bodily  processes,  are  as  yet  recalcitrant.  Our  aesthetic 
co-ordination  is  still  in  the  making.  Furthermore,  the  substitutional 
capabilities  of  the  aesthetic  account  for  its  social  value  and  also  for  the 
well-known  fact  that  an  experience  of  the  same  object  may  be  to  us  at  one 
time  aesthetic,  at  another  time,  not. 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  at  this  point  that  substitutions  occur  in  all 
types  of  mental  operation.  They  are  the  gist  of  the  selective,  symbolizing 
work  of  attention,  of  judgment,  the  essence  of  the  concept. )  Baldwin  uses 
the  principle  of  substitution  to  account  for  change  in  both  the  phylogenetic 
and  the  ontogenetic  series;  it  offers  him  his  only  real  escape  from  the 
stereotyped  repetitions  of  his  circular  or  imitative  reactions.^  I  do  not 
advance  the  notion  of  substitution  as  affording  a  new  type  of  explanation 
of  the  aesthetic  experience.  It  is  really  implied  in  all  that  has  been  said 
hitherto  regarding  the  aesthetic  as  a  particular  form  of  mental  organization. 
It  serves  merely  to  bring  out  at  a  fresh  angle  the  richness  and  fulness  of  its 
constitution. 

Experimental  psychology  in  these  days  is  devoting  considerable  atten- 
tion to  the  investigation  of  certain  of  the  formal  aesthetic  categories.  It 
has  dealt  chiefly  with  symmetry  and  rhythm,  both  as  being  primary  phe- 
nomena from  which  the  other  categories  may  be  derived  and  as  lending 
themselves  most  successfully  to  experimental  procedure.  The  work  of 
Fechner*  on  the  "golden  section"  is  classic;    and  in  his  footsteps  have 

»  Mental  Development,  pp.  257-59;  cf.  pp.  22-25. 
a  Vorschule  der  Aesthetik,  Vol.  I,  chap.  xiv. 


SPECIFIC  AESTHETIC  CATEGORIES  93 

followed  Witmer,^  Pierce,'  Jonas  Cohn,3  Dr.  Puffer,4  and  others.  Bolton,' 
Meumann,'^  and  Robert  MacDougall'  have  made  notable  investigations  of 
rhythm. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  two  recent  studies  in  the  aesthetics 
of  visual  form,  Dr.  Puffer's  Studies  in  Symmetry  and  Mr.  Angler's  The 
Aesthetics  of  Unequal  Division,  both  reduce  asymmetrical  forms  having 
aesthetic  value  to  cases  of  substitutional  symmetry.  In  fact,  they  imply 
that  it  is  only  as  symmetry  becomes  to  some  extent  substitutional  that  it 
becomes  in  itself  aesthetic.  Dr.  Puffer,  dealing  chiefly  with  material  of 
high  content  value,  reproductions  of  European  masterpieces  of  painting, 
but  comparing  them  with  specimens  of  primitive  art  and  examining  them  as 
examples  of  space  composition,  finds  that  "only  in  the  course  of  artistic 
development  do  we  find  the  rigid,  yet  often  unbalanced,  symmetry  relaxing 
into  a  free  substitutional  symmetry.''^  By  balance  she  means  a  symmetry 
attained  through  equivalents  or  substitutes  instead  of  through  mere  redu- 
plication of  parts.  Angier,  going  back  to  Fechner's  problem  of  the  most 
pleasing  division  of  a  line,  finds  that  the  seeming  preference  for  unsymme- 
trical  division  is  really  a  preference  for  a  "subtle  symmetry,"  since  the  motor 
innervation  demanded  in  following  the  longer  line  is  balanced  by  the  com- 
bination of  innervation  and  inhibition,  or,  more  correctly,  by  the  inner- 
vation of  antagonistic  muscles,  in  following  the  shorter  line.  This  gives 
consciousness  of  an  equal  expenditure  of  energy.  He  calls  this  "a  sym- 
metry of  a  higher  order,  because  objectively  the  disposition  of  its  ele- 
ments is  not  graphically  obvious,  and  psychophysically  the  quantitative 
unity  is  attained  through  a  greater  variety  of  processes.  "9 

These  results  are  in  fine  with  the  position  taken  by  modern  painters 
and  art  critics  that  the  essence  of  the  aesthetic  value  of  a  picture  lies  in 
"composition,"  in  pattern  or  arrangement  of  parts,  not  in  subject-matter 
or  associative  elements  in  general.  While  these  may  reinforce  the  pri- 
mary aesthetic  or  "formal"  elements  in  a  picture,  they  can  never  in  them- 

I  Philosophische  Siudien,  Vol.  IX. 
»  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  I. 

3  Allgemeine  Aesthetik  (1901). 

4  Psychological  Review,  Monograph  Supplements,  Vol.  IV. 

5  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  VI. 

6  Philosophische  Studien,  Vol.  X. 

7  Psychological  Review,  Monograph  Supplements,  Vol.  IV. 

8  Harvard  Psychological  Sttidies;  Psychological  Review,  Monograph  Supplements, 
Vol.  IV,  p.  539. 

9  Ibid.,  p.  561. 


94  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

selves  make  it  aesthetic,  when  the  other  requirements  are  lacking.  The  aes- 
thetic is  essentially  structural,  not  representational.^  This  psychological 
and  artistic  view  is  borne  out  by  a  genetic  survey  of  art  forms.  The  arts 
of  primitive  and  natural  peoples  begin  for  the  most  part  in  rude  design, 
symbol,  pattern,  and  only  gradually  take  on  a  representational  character.^ 

The  studies  in  rhythm  are  so  complicated  and  so  detailed  that  citation 
from  them  would  hardly  serve  our  purpose.  In  general,  they  show  that 
rhythms  having  distinct  aesthetic  value  give  marked  evidence  of  subjec- 
tive substitutions  and  of  progressive  integration  of  parts  into  larger  wholes. 
Rhythm  invariably  means  control,  and  that  control  which  involves  the 
highest  degree  of  subordination  and  integration  of  elements  is  that  which 
is  most  fully  reported  in  consciousness.  Such  control  of  many  factors  is 
on  the  psychical  side  the  aesthetic  experience.  Rhythms  having  aesthetic 
value  are  found  on  examination  to  be  far  from  being  as  simple  as  they  are 
for  consciousness.  R.  H.  Stetson,  in  his  paper  on  "Rhythm  and  Rhyme," 
says  in  a  passage  already  quoted  in  part  (p.  31): 

The  free  reading  of  verse  easily  passes  over  into  singing  or  chanting.  When 
this  happens,  the  thing  most  noticeable  in  the  new  form  is  its  regulated,  automatic, 
and  somewhat  rigid  character Along  with  this  precision  of  all  the  move- 
ments comes  a  tendency  to  beat  a  new  rhythm.  This  accompanying  rhythm  is 
simpler  and  broader  in  character;  it  is  a  kind  of  long  swell  on  which  the  speech 
movements  ripple,  ....  a  third  rhythm  may  appear  to  mark  the  main  stresses 
of  the  two  processes  ....  The  essential  character  of  musical  rhythm,  as 
contrasted  with  the  rhythm  of  both  simple  sounds  and  of  verse,  is  just  this  co- 
ordination of  a  number  of  rhythms  which  move  side  by  side.  This  is  the  reason 
for  the  immense  complexity  and  variety  of  musical  rhythms.  The  processes 
check  each  other,  and  furnish  a  basis  for  a  precision  and  elaborateness  of 
rhythmical  movements  in  the  individual  parts  which  is  quite  impossible  in  a 
simple  rhythra.3 

Rhythm  is,  of  course,  only  one  factor  in  the  total  aesthetic  effect  of 
modern  music;  but  it  furnishes  the  fundamental  framework  which  carries 
the  subtler  tonal  factors.  Rhythm,  psychologically  considered,  means 
the  satisfaction  of  recurrent  expectation.  After  the  first  few  repetitions 
of  the  objective  interval  or  period — one  repetition  is  held  sufficient  to 
initiate  the  rhythm  experience^the  mind  looks  forward,  is  on  the  stretch 
for  the  recurrence  of  the  stimulus.  Where  such  satisfaction  of  expectation 
is  long  delayed  or  irregular,  consciousness  is  unpleasantly  toned,  and  seeks 

^  A.  W.  Dow,  Composition;  H.  R.  Poore,  Pictorial  Composition;  etc. 

3  Cf.  Ernest  FenoUosa,  "  The  Fine  Arts,"  Elementary  School  Teacher,  Vol.  V. 

3  Harvard  Psychological  Studies,  Psychological  Review,  Monograph  Supplements, 
Vol.  IV,  pp.  465,  466. 


SPECIFIC   AESTHETIC  CATEGORIES  95 

to  readjust  the  situation,  but  where,  as  in  rhythm,  the  alternations  of  expec- 
tation and  satisfaction  are  regular,  the  situation  maintains  itself,  and  the 
tensions  and  relaxations  mutually  reinforce.  If  there  was  no  growth, 
no  construction,  however,  the  experience  would  soon  become  monotonous; 
and  this  is,  indeed,  the  case  with  the  persistence  of  a  simple  rhythm.  But 
literally  the  experience  never  is  the  repetition  of  a  single,  unchanging 
element.  Each  new  beat  of  the  rhythm  is  modified  psychologically  by  all 
that  has  gone  before,  and  modifies  all  that  comes  after,  so  that  both  the 
expectation  and  the  fulfilment  in  each  case  is  different  from  the  one  preced- 
ing it.  That  is,  the  rhythm  experience  is  a  whole,  in  which  each  part  is 
shaped  by  its  position  within  that  whole.     MacDougall  says  on  this  point: 

There  is  properly  no  repetition  of  identical  sequences  in  rhythm It 

.  ...  is,  indeed,  in  strict  terms,  inconceivable;  for  by  its  very  recurrence  it 
(the  sequence)  is  differentiated  from  the  initial  presentation,  and  combines  organi- 
cally with  the  latter  to  produce  a  more  highly  synthetic  form.  And  however  often 
this  process  is  repeated,  each  representation  of  the  original  sequence  will  have 
become  an  element  functionally  unique  and  locally  unalterable  in  the  last  and 
highest  synthesis  which  the  whole  series  presents.' 

Whether  the  rhythmic  whole  be  a  measure  or  a  symphony,  each  element 
is  an  increment.  The  unique  power  of  rhythm  is  that  it  binds  together 
a  complex  dynamic  whole,  so  that  the  end  is  felt  from  the  beginning,  and 
yet  is  not  revealed  in  all  its  richness  until  the  final  moment  of  attainment. 
Such  a  description  is  practically  what  we  have  given  as  the  essence  of  the 
aesthetic  experience;  and  we  may  safely  say,  I  think,  that  at  the  heart  of 
every  aesthetic  experience  is  rhythm. 

All  the  recent  experimental  studies  of  specific  aesthetic  categories 
emphasize  the  motor  or  activity  elements  entering  in,  and  the  complex 
interrelations  of  these  constituents.  They  therefore  corroborate,  so  far 
as  they  go,  the  position  I  have  taken  that  the  aesthetic  categories  must 
find  their  place  and  explanation  within  the  total  aesthetic  experience  or 
situation. 

Keeping  this  reference  to  the  total  experience  in  mind,  we  get  the  imme- 
diate bearings  of  such  terms  as  the  "significant,"  the  "characteristic," 
and  of  such  formulations  of  method  as  the  principles  of  economy  and 
restraint.  These  are  obviously  derived  more  directly  from  the  immediate 
experience  than  are  the  formal  categories.  (They  essay  to  give  the  total 
effect  of  such  an  experience  or  the  means  by  which  it  is  achieved.  When 
one  asks,  "Significant,  characteristic  of  what?"  one  is  obliged  to  answer 

I  "The  Structure  of  Simple  Rhythm  Forms,"  Psychological  Review,  Monograph 
Supplements,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  318,  319. 


96  THE   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

at  first  sight,  "Of  the  object."  But  it  is  the  object  as  felt,  as  a  part  of 
the  aesthetic  consciousness,  not  as  detached,  as  reflected  upon  afterward. 
The  terms  represent  an  effort  to  catch  and  to  crystallize  the  entire  aesthetic 
experience,  to  sum  up  its  unitary  and  concrete  nature,  its  high  individ- 
uality. If  we  accept  my  description  of  the  aesthetic  as  involving  the 
incorporation  into  one  co-ordination  of  a  host  of  minor  activities,  the 
terms  "significant"  and  "characteristic"  give  a  fairly  adequate  account  of 
the  situation  from  the  conscious  side.  It  is,  to  use  terms  that  I  have 
already  overworked,  an  immediate  sense  of  the  fulness,  satisfactoriness, 
exhaustiveness  of  the  situation — a  feeling  of  enhanced  vitahty  and  power. 
In  such  a  frame  of  mind  one  seems  to  penetrate  into  the  heart  of  things,  to 
reahze  emotionally  all  their  possibilities.'  Nothing  is  lacking,  yet  nothing 
is  superfluous.  In  becoming  aesthetically  identified  with  the  object, 
all  incongruities  and  excrescences  cease  to  exist  for  consciousness.  The 
experience  may  well  be  called  significant,  characteristic.  It  takes  up  into 
itself  all  the  resources  of  the  situation.  It  is  familiar  because  we  feel 
ourselves  so  thoroughly  at  home  in  it;  it  is  novel  because  there  is  a  sort 
of  joyous  wonder  at  having  come  so  suddenly  into  possession.  The 
moment  is  peculiarly  intimate,  peculiarly  our  own,  at  the  same  time  that 
our  personality  is  enlarged  to  its  widest  scope. 

The  term  "economy,"^  though  applied  by  the  outside  observer,  is 
relevant  to  the  description  of  such  an  immediate  experience  because  any 
awareness  of  waste  or  strain  would  at  once  indicate  the  presence  of  activ- 
ities not  thoroughly  wrought  into  the  co-ordination,  and  would  reveal  dis- 
cordant, and  therefore  non-aesthetic  and  non-characteristic,  elements  in 
the  situation.  Restraint  applies  to  the  high  degree  of  functional  inhibition 
present  in  an  experience  where  many  activities  persist  in  a  state  of  counter- 
poise and  equilibrium.  But  both  terms  may  be  used  with  regard  to  any 
form  of  co-ordination,  and  so  are  not  of  prime  importance  in  aesthetics. 

n.      THE  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

Hitherto  I  have  considered  the  aesthetic  experience  as  if  it  were  an 
immediate  experience  always  broadly  of  one  type,  however  much  the 
objective  media  might  differ.  But  the  naive  person  and  the  critic  alike 
recQgnize  certain  distinctive  types,  having  their  own  characteristics,  although 
falling  under  the  general  category  of  the  aesthetic.  The  tendency  among 
critics  has  been,  on  the  whole,  to  magnify  the  differences  rather  than  the 

I  Herbert  Spencer,  Essays  Scientific,  Political  and  Speculative,  Vol.  II,  essays  on 
"The  Philosophy  of  Style"  and  on  "Gracefulness;"  Bernard  Bosanquet,  History  of 
Aesthetic,  pp.  386,  387. 


THE  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  97 

'likenesses  among  them,  and  to  set  the  sublime,  the  tragic,  the  comic,  over   » 
'against  the  beautiful  proper,  as  in  some  sense  contrasted  and  irreducible 
forms.    The  question  of  the  place  and  significance  of  the  ugly  has  also 
been  a  source  of  perplexity  ^nd  dispute. 

Here  I  can  only  show  that  these  types  of  experience  are  not  inconsistent 
with  my  statement  of  the  aesthetic.  As  in  any  other  form  of  conscious 
experience,  the  degree  of  organization  attained  in  the  aesthetic,  the 
specific  habits  or  groups  of  habits  most  intimately  involved,  and  the  rela- 
tions of  activities  to  one  another  within  the  co-ordination  may  vary  widely 
within  the  limits  marking  off  the  aesthetic  as  a  distinctive  type  of  experi- 
ence. These  limits  I  have  described  as  the  attainment  of  control,  not 
through  a  dropping-out  of  most  of  the  elements  of  conflict,  or  through  a 
successive,  serial  resolution  of  tensions,  but  through  the  incorporation  of 
all  the  elements  concerned  into  one  comprehensive  whole. 

It  should  have  been  made  clear  by  this  stage  of  the  argument,  however, 
that  the  "pause  of  satisfaction"  does  not  emerge  merely  at  the  culmination 
of  this  process  of  organization.  Neither  does  it  remain  stable  throughout 
the  entire  process.  The  incorporation  of  all  the  various  activities  is  not 
literally,  but  only  approximately,  simultaneous.  In  some  experiences 
these  stages  in  the  process  reveal  themselves  directly  to  consciousness; 
in  others  they  are  so  welded  together  that  they  reveal  themselves  only  to 
artificial  analysis.  As  in  the  life-history  of  all  co-ordinations,  the  move- 
ment is  undoubtedly  from  the  larger,  more  comprehensive  adjustments 
to  the  finer  and  more  delicate.  As  this  process  proceeds,  the  aesthetic 
experience  buds  and  then  ripens.  Moreover,  since  the  whole,  though 
unitary  for  consciousness,  is  not  simple,  but  a  congeries  of  lesser  activities, 
there  exist  within  it  at  any  one  moment  a  host  of  minor  strains  and  reso- 
lutions, all  tending  more  or  less  to  fall  into  accord  with  what  we  may  call 
the  major  rhythm,  but  succeeding  or  falling  short  according  to  the  stage 
of  the  process  and  their  own  relation  to  it.  In  other  words,  we  have  pres- 
ent both  the  successive  and  simultaneous  substitutions  which  we  have 
described,  the  rhythmic  advance,  of  which  each  phase  is  determined  both 
by  its  place  in  the  whole  and  by  its  own  make-up.  The  "patterns"  which 
this  interplay  of  elements  may  assume  are,  at  the  present  stage  of  our  knowl- 
edge, innumerable.  Language  is  too  clumsy  to  convey  an  adequate  notion 
of  the  intricacy  and  delicacy  of  mental  operations.  In  such  a  situation  it 
is  quite  possible  to  think  of  individual  minor  activities  remaining  relatively 
stubborn,  bound  up  less  integrally  with  the  whole,  and  so  interfering  to  a 
certain  extent  and  tending  to  escape.  Such  an  account  has  inevitably  an 
associationist  cast,  as  if  one  were  thinking  of  the  aesthetic  experience  as  a 


98     -  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

mere  aggregation  of  mental  units  somehow  brought  into  artificial  connection 
and  individually  unmodified.  But  the  whole  drift  of  the  discussion  should 
forbid  such  interpretation. 

As  regards  the  specific  activities  taking  part  in  any  concrete  aesthetic 
experience,  we  find  normally  in  each  a  cluster  of  what  are  often  called 
"fundamental  habits,"  motor- visual,  motor-auditory,  mo  tor- visual-audi- 
tory, and  the  like.  In  these  the  co-ordinations  are  so  close  and  so  long 
established  that  they  give,  on  the  psychological  side,  examples  of  com- 
plete fusion.  When  drawn  within  the  aesthetic  co-ordination  they  have 
much  to  do  with  determining  its  character,  with  setting  its  rhythms.  They 
are  themselves  modified  in  being  subjected  to  the  control  of  the  larger 
co-ordination,  but  they  give  it  a  dominant  coloring.  Into  relation  with 
these  habit-complexes  fall  the  various  physiological  rhythms,  and  the 
subtler  activities  of  memory  and  imagination. 

A  concrete  aesthetic  situation,  then,  has  its  character  determined  by  a 
number  of  specific  conditions.  It  may  involve  this  or  that  cluster  of  funda- 
mental habits.  It  may  go  through  certain  recognizable  stages  of  develop- 
ment from  the  partially  to  the  completely  aesthetic.  It  may  retain  or 
shake  out,  in  the  course  of  its  progress,  minor  aspects  that  are  not  in  them- 
selves aesthetic,  though  caught  transiently  within  the  aesthetic  whole.  These 
elements  must  not,  of  course,  be  sufficiently  in  opposition  to  disintegrate  the 
major  co-ordination.  It  is  important  also  to  consider  that  these  relatively 
non-aesthetic  elements  may  have  a  positive  aesthetic  value  in  prolonging 
the  experience  as  a  whole.  The  more  complete  and  perfect  a  co-ordination 
is,  the  less  likely  is  it  to  persist.  It  has  fulfilled  its  purpose  and  begins  to 
fall  apart  through  its  own  effect  as  a  stimulus.  In  fact,  any  aesthetic 
experience,  as  I  have  said,  maintains  itself  only  through  its  play  of  ten- 
sions, its  give-and-take  of  equivalents,  its  balance  of  stimulation  and 
recuperation.  The  aesthetic  character  of  the  most  absorbed  enjoyment 
of  a  statue,  a  picture,  a  piece  of  music,  is  due  to  the  balances  achieved 
through  "substitutional  symmetry"  or  rhythm.  There  is  a  certain 
"struggle  of  activities"  even  here,  though  the  total  effect  is  one  of  assuage- 
ment and  serenity.  In  other  cases  the  struggle  itseff  comes  into  conscious- 
ness, although  never  as  confusion,  but  always  bounded  and  controlled 
by  a  tranquilizing  sense  of  the  situation  in  its  entirety. 

Within  the  bounds  of  this  general  description  there  is  room,  I  think, 
for  all  the  modifications  of  the  aesthetic.  What  we  mean  by  pure  beauty 
seems  to  me  to  be  represented  by  the  co-ordination  that  approximates  most 
closely  to  the  simultaneous  blending  of  all  the  constituents,  to  a  fusion, 
so  that  we  have  little  consciousness  of  stages  within  the  process,  of  the  pat- 


THE  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  99 

tern  of  construction  as~such,  but  a  sudden  and  widely  diffused  sense  of 
agreement  among  all  our  activities,  an  awareness  of  enhancement  and 
enlargement  of  life,  of  freedom  and  harmony.  And  this  is  by  no  means 
incompatible  with  a  sense  of  tranquillity  and  attainment;  in  fact,  it  neces- 
sitates it.  What  is  often  spoken  of  as  the  poignancy  of  beauty  belongs, 
as  I  see  it,  to  its  dying  fall,  to  the  moment  when  the  body  of  emotional 
satisfaction  aroused  rolls  back  over  the  entire  organism,  and  the  experi- 
ence begins  to  fall  asunder.  Keats  catches  this  aspect  of  beauty  incom- 
parably when  he  says  of  Melancholy: 

She  dwells  with  Beauty — Beauty  that  must  die; 
And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu. 

Such  realization  of  the  sadness  of  beauty  comes,  however,  at  the  moment 
subsequent  to  that  of  total  absorption  in  the  experience.  It  is  an  emo- 
tion that  is  the  first-fruits  of  reflection  upon  the  situation.  Literature 
runs  over  with  laments  at  the  fleeting  nature  of  beauty;  but  such  transi- 
toriness  is  of  its  very  essence  as  immediate  experience,  however  much  we 
may  hold  reflectively  that  "a  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  for  ever."  It  is  a 
joy  that  we  may  experience  over  and  over;  it  does  not  last  long  at  any 
one  time. 

Modern  aesthetics,  in  its  reaction  from  the  metaphysical  interpre- 
tations of  beauty,] has  fought  shy  of  definitions,  and  has  at  times  gone  to 
the  length  of  denying  that  beauty  plays  a  necessary  part  in  the  aesthetic 
experience.  But  if  we  take  beauty  in  some  sense  as  our  aesthetic  stand- 
ard, meaning  that  experience  in  its  most  conspicuous  and  concentrated 
form,  there  seems  no  valid  reason  for  abandoning  a  term  so  deeply  rooted 
in  the  vocabularies  both  of  aesthetic  theory  and  of  daily  life. 

The  sublime  is  more  difficult  to  place  with  reference  to  the  aesthetic. 
Its  nature  has  long  been  a  theme  for  controversy.  Both  Burke^  and  Kant,' 
as  is  well  known,  distinguished  it  from  the  beautiful,  making  it  to  some 
extent  antagonistic  to  it  and  bringing  it  under  only  their  most  general 
statement  of  the  aesthetic.  Burke's  treatment  is  in  terms  of  physiology 
and  of  the  nature  of  the  object;  Kant's  is  in  terms  of  the  philosophically 
subjective  and  objective — phraseology  that  I  have  sought  to  avoid — and 
can  be  understood  and  criticized  only  in  the  light  of  his  discussion  of  the 
aesthetic  judgment  and  its  relations  to  the  intellectual  judgment.  He 
makes  the  sublime  more  subjective,  more  emotional  than  the  beautiful,  not 

I  A  Philosophical  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  of  Our  Ideas  of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful, 
Part  IV,  sections  1-18. 

»  Critique  of  Judgment  (translated  by  Branard),  Part  I,  Book  II. 


lOO  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

SO  dependent  upon  the  form  of  the  object.  "No  sensible  form  can  contain 
the  subhme  properly  so  called.'"  "The  beautiful,"  he  says,  "directly  brings 
with  it  a  feeling  of  the  furtherance  of  life  ....  but  the  Sublime  is  ...  . 
produced  by  the  feeling  of  a  momentary  checking  of  the  vital  powers  and  a 
consequent  stronger  outflow  of  them."* 

Unfair  as  it  may  be  to  enlist  Kant  in  the  service  of  a  discussion  so  alien 
to  his  own,  this  last  statement  is  in  line  with  my  own  rough  formulation 
of  the  sublime,  though  my  mode  of  approach  is  more  like  Burke's.  In 
terms  of  the  aesthetic  situation,  the  sublime,  as  I  conceive  it,  stands  for  a 
co-ordination  so  extraordinarily  wide  that  all  the  activities  bound  up  in 
it,  particularly  the  groups  of  fundamental  habits,  are,  so  to  speak,  on  the 
stretch  to  compass  it,  are  in  unstable  equilibrium  within  it.  This  imparts 
to  the  experience  as  a  whole  a  feeling  of  widely  diffused,  though  not  exces- 
sive, strain.  It  is  a  feeling  similar  to  that  which  we  have  to  a  slight  extent 
when  we  take  an  unusually  long  breath.  Though  every  aesthetic  experi- 
ence involves  inhibition  and  concomitant  emotional  consciousness,  they 
are  here  extraordinarily  widespread.  If  the  experience  is  prolonged,  it 
verges  upon  the  unpleasant,  and  the  co-ordination  collapses.  Such  a 
situation  leads  to  reflection  upon  the  ordinary  level  of  experience  and  this 
exalted  level,  and  to  a  comparison  of  the  self  in  the  two  experiences,  or 
of  the  self  and  the  object  embodying  grandeur  or  power.  This  comparison 
contributes  to  an  enlarged  view  of  the  self,  to  a  widening  of  the  boundaries 
of  one's  personal  experience.  The  effect  of  the  sublime,  then,  seems  to 
me  to  be  reached  through  what  we  may  call  the  large  circumference  of  the 
co-ordination, '  I  cannot  agree  with  Santayana's  statement  that  "unity 
by  inclusion  gives  us  the  beautiful;  unity  by  exclusion,  opposition,  and 
isolation  gives  us  the  sublime. "3  To  me  the  sense  of  the  sublime  arises 
just  because  the  felt  unity  includes  so  much.  It  is  true,  however,  that 
the  awareness  is  of  the  unity  rather  than  of  its  various  elements.  In  gen- 
eral, I  accept  his  further  description,  though  the  word  "passive"  seems 
to  me  subject  to  misinterpretation.  "Both  are  pleasures;  but  the  pleasure 
of  the  one  is  warm,  passive,  and  pervasive ;  that  of  the  other  cold,  imperi- 
ous, and  keen.  The  one  identifies  us  with  the  world;  the  other  raises 
us  above  it.  "3  One,  I  think,  brings  out  all  the  implications  and  possi- 
bilities of  our  ordinary  life;  the  other  lifts  us  to  a  new  level  that  affects  us 
with  a  breath  of  the  strange  and  the  austere.  We  may  say,  perhaps, 
that  one  possesses  and  one  lacks,  at  least  in  any  marked  degree,  the  "famili- 

'  Critique  of  Judgment,  p.  103. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  102. 

3  The  Sense  of  Beauty,  pp.  235,  236. 


THE  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  loT' 

arity  feeling."  And  they  dissolve  into  different  types  of  reflection.  But 
they  are  both  aesthetic  experiences. 

In  a  brief  statement  of  the  relations  of  the  tragic,  the  comic,  etc.,  to 
my  general  view  of  the  aesthetic  experience,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  deal 
with  the  extensive  literature  centering  about  these  terms,  especially  about 
the  tragic.  The  classic  discussions  from  Aristotle's  down  I  must  assume 
to  be  familiar.  In  the  drama,  whether  tragedy  or  comedy,  we  have  the 
unfolding  of  the  aesthetic  experience  in  its  most  complex  and  sustained, 
if  not  in  its  purest  and  most  concentrated,  form.  The  various  stages  in 
the  development  of  the  experience  here  come  into  consciousness  as  recog- 
nized elements  in  the  total  effect.  We  get  on  a  scale  large  enough  for 
observation  the  whole  movement  and  design  of  the  aesthetic.  And  we  see 
that,  while  it  is  built  on  the  "hunting-pattern"  of  active  conflict,  yet  this 
conflict  in  all  its  manifestations  is  given  unity  of  effect,  maintains  a  moving 
equilibrium  by  means  of  an  elaborate  balance  of  parts,  a  highly  organized 
series  of  substitutions  and  compensations  of  both  the  sequential  and  simul- 
taneous types. 

Freytag's'  familiar  analysis  of  dramatic  construction  illustrates  the 
successive  or  rhythmic  sort  of  substitutions.  He  schematizes  the  action 
of  a  play  by  means  of  a  pyramid,  or,  more  accurately,  by  a  triangle,  some- 
times equilateral  with  the  apex  at  the  mechanical  middle  of  the  play,  some- 
times with  one  side  longer,  sometimes  the  other.  One  side  represents 
the  rising  action;  the  other,  the  falling;  the  apex,  their  point  of  acutest 
conflict,  the  crisis.  Acts  and  scenes,  though  in  some  respects  conventional 
divisions,  show  also,  in  the  hands  of  a  master  of  dramatic  form,  a  similar 
rise  and  fall.  They  are  the  smaller  ripples  of  a  larger  rhythm,  each  deter- 
mined by  those  that  precede  and  follow,  as  well  as  by  the  whole  of  which  it 
is  a  component.  =  Where  there  seem  to  be  irregularities  analysis  reveals 
expenditure  of  equivalent  amounts  of  energy  as  clearly  as  it  may  be  seen 
in  the  case  of  the  unequal  division  of  a  line  or  in  the  different  compensatory 
values  of  bright  and  dark  colors.3 

Professor  R.  G.  Moulton  's  study  of  Macbeth'^  brings  out  admirably  the 
various  ways  in  which  the  rhythmic  balance  of  the  play  is  preserved  with- 
out the  slightest  sacrifice  of  variety  and  interest.  The  play  as  a  whole  deals 
with  a  crime  and  its  punishment,  a  sin  and  its  retribution,  a  flawed  char- 
acter and  its  disintegration.     In  the  first  half  we  have  Macbeth's  series  of 

1  The  Technique  of  the  Drama  (translated  by  E.  J.  McEwan). 

2  Cf.  E.  Woodbridge,  r/jc  Drama:  ItsLawandltsTechniqiie. 

3  E.  Pierce,  "  The  Aesthetics  of  Simple  Forms,"  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  I,  p.  494. 

4  Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist,  pp.127-43. 


I©2  '  •  '  *    ''  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

successes;  in  the  second  half,  his  series  of  failures.  Banquo  in  the  first  half 
is  balanced  by  Macduflf  in  the  last  half.  The  swift  succession  of  events  in 
the  first  part,  the  tense  excitement  and  horror  caused  by  the  murder  of 
Dimcan,  are  balanced  by  the  slower  succession  of  lesser  and  somewhat  con- 
fused events,  with  their  frequent  shiftings  of  scene,  in  the  second  part. 
The  tremendous  poise  and  self-control  of  Lady  Macbeth  at  the  time  of  the 
murder  and  after  Macbeth 's  accession  to  the  throne  are  balanced  by  the 
pitiable  self-revelation  of  the  sleep-walking  scene.  The  reliance  of  Mac- 
beth upon  the  outward  things  of  life  and  upon  outward  supernatural  agen- 
cies is  balanced  by  his  ironical  betrayal  by  all  these  props.  In  general, 
the  slower  and  less  individually  significant  events  of  the  second  half  of  the 
play  roll  up,  as  no  sharp,  decisive  action  could  do,  the  full  weight  of  punish- 
ment for  such  crimes  and  weaknesses  as  Macbeth 's.  At  the  last,  his  death 
comes,  not  as  a  capping  horror,  but  rather  as  affording  relief  and  escape 
both  for  him  and  for  the  spectator.  Death,  Macbeth  as  a  brave  soldier 
had  never  feared.  It  is  life  rather  under  conditions  of  collapse  and  dis- 
honor that  would  be  a  harrowing  and  useless  prolongation  of  agony  for 
him  and  for  the  witnesses  of  his  career;  and  so  would  mar  the  unity  of  the 
whole. 

At  every  stage  in  Macbeth,  too,  may  be  detected  instances  of  intricate 
and  subtle  "  substitutional  symmetry,"  the  playing-off  of  one  contempo- 
raneous element  or  group  of  elements  against  another.  Macbeth  and  Lady 
Macbeth,  Macbeth  and  Banquo,  the  mutual  contrasts  or  heightenings  of 
setting  and  action — most  of  all,  the  competing  motives,  doubts,  and  pur- 
poses within  each  soul — make  essential  contribution  to  the  total  effect.^ 
In  no  case  are  these  elements  random  and  purposeless — they  are  governed 
by  the  general  laws  operative  in  all  aesthetic  structure  and  pattern. 

Such  an  account  gives  only  a  skeleton  of  the  multiple  ways  in  which 
this  play  illustrates  the  forms  of  aesthetic  balance.  Its  substitutions  and 
compensations  are  so  skilfully  effected  that  there  is  no  suggestion  of  artifice. 
Its  moments  of  tragic  horror  are  compensated  for  by  periods  of  repose  or 
by  gradual  diminution  of  strain.  It  shows  the  aesthetic  as  opposed  to  the 
non-aesthetic  use  of  contrast.     Its  content  value  is  so  great  as  to  render 

I  The  above  discussion  was  written  before  the  appearance  of  Dr.  Ethel  D.  Puffer's 
book,  The  Psychology  of  Beauty.  It  is  obvious  that  what  I  have  called  "contempor- 
aneous balance"  she  has  worked  out  fully  and  made  the  essential  dramatic  element, 
"confrontation"  or  balanced  tension.  The  extent  to  which  I  am  indebted  to  her  is 
indicated  by  my  borrowing  the  alternative  term  that  I  have  used,  "substitutional 
symmetry,"  from  her  "Studies  in  Symmetry."  Yet  to  my  mind  she  hardly  does 
justice  to  the  forward  and  backward  movement  in  the  drama,  the  rhythmic  or 
sequential  balance. 


THE  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  103 

difl5cult  an  analysis  in  terms  of  bare  aesthetic  construction.  But,  in  spite 
of  its  violence  and  bloodshed,  it  "purges  through  pity  and  terror"  as  truly 
as  did  the  noblest  of  Greek  tragedies.  It  leads  to  thought  of  self  in  rela- 
tion to  laige  ethical  and  spiritual  problems,  thus  bringing  in  the  element 
of  the  sublime  that  is  essential  in  all  true  tragedy. 

I  have  used  as  illustration  a  particular  art  product.  But  the  drama 
can  never  be  considered  intelligibly  apart  from  the  immediate  experience 
of  the  spectator  or  creator,  his  aesthetic  participation  in  the  situation.  I 
have,  of  course,  made  that  experience  the  central  point  of  my  entire  dis- 
cussion, so  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  do  more  than  refer  to  it  here. 

Keeping  in  mind  this  aesthetic  identification  of  the  spectator  with  the 
structural  development  of  the  drama,  I  make  bold  to  say  that  the  more 
I  study  the  drama,  especially  the  tragic  drama,  the  more  fully  it  reveals 
itself  as  pre-eminently  the  type  of  all  aesthetic  experience.  Its  content  is, 
of  course,  varied  and  distinctive;  its  tensions  and  relaxation,  stimulation 
and  repose,  substitutions  and  compensations,  are  conspicuously  above 
the  level  of  conscious  discrimination.  But  its  ''pattern"  may  be  traced  in 
all  forms  of  art,  all  aesthetic  situations.  It  is  shown  most  clearly  in  music, 
but  it  underlies  even  the  enjoyment  of  a  picture  or  a  landscape.  We  have 
got  beyond  the  point  where  we  characterize  any  manifestation  of  the  aesthe- 
tic attitude  as  passive  or  static.  All,  in  their  degree,  are  active,  constructive, 
rhythmic.  This  may  seem  an  extreme  position  to  take;  and  it  obviously  does 
not  refer  to  the  art  product  in  itself  or  to  the  reflective  estimate  of  the  person 
after  the  aesthetic  experience.  But  it  is  a  view  that  cannot  be  alien  to  the 
type  of  thinker  who  regards  all  thought  as  in  some  sense  an  inward  drama. 

The  peculiar  aesthetic  efifect  of  comedy  and  the  comic  has  long  been  a 
puzzle,  and  has  perhaps  been  made  a  greater  puzzle  than  need  be.  It  has 
even  been  said  to  lie  almost  wholly  beyond  the  borders  of  the  aesthetic. 
But  that  is  arbitrarily  to  shut  out  experiences  that  are  rich  in  aesthetic  satis- 
faction. There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  genuinely  comic  experi- 
ence, whether  only  of  the  moment  or  prolonged  throughout  a  drama,  is 
immediate  and  self-inclosed,  having  its  own  pattern  and  unity,  and  demand- 
ing the  intimate  participation  of  the  spectator.  Like  tragedy,  it  has  its 
rhythm  of  stimulation  and  relief;  like  it,  though  by  means  of  widely  differ- 
ent emotional  effects,  it  offers  a  basis  for  new  levels  of  achievement,  new 
envisagement  of  non-aesthetic  situations. 

The  various  theoretical  discussions  of  the  comic,  whether  they  fall  under 
the  general  heads  of  the  "degradation  theory,"  the  "baffled  expectation 
theory,"  or  the  incongruity  theory,  explicitly  so  called,  all  imply  that  in- 
congruity of  some  sort,  deviation  from  established  standard,  contrast,  is  an 


I04  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

essential  element  in  the  comic*  The  difficulty  with  all  these  general  state- 
ments is  that  so  many  cases  of  incongruity  can  be  educed,  in  which  there  is 
no  trace  of  the  comic.  This  has  led  to  the  further  specification  in  some  of 
them  that  the  thing  compared  with  the  norm  shall  be  smaller,  more  trifling, 
not  larger  and  more  important.  Such  a  view  is  illustrated  by  Herbert 
Spencer's  phrase,  "descending  incongruity,"^  by  Lipps's  little  thing  mas- 
querading as  great  and  suddenly  revealed  in  its  true  character.^  Here  we 
have  various  modifications  of  the  "degradation  theory"  baldly  stated  by 
Hobbes.  They  all  involve,  furthermore,  some  recognition  of  Kant's  view 
of  the  part  played  by  expectation  and  surprise — the  irruption  of  the  unex- 
pected into  the  incomplete  situation  dominated  by  the  expectant  attitude. 

In  general,  the  comic  is  more  difficult  to  handle  apart  from  specified 
content  than  is  the  tragic.  The  most  illuminating  treatise  that  we  have  in 
English,  George  Meredith's  Essay  on  Comedy,  is  rich  in  concrete  illustra- 
tive matter.  But  Meredith's  insistence  upon  a  complex  and  polished 
society  as  essential  to  the  flowering  of  the  spirit  of  true  comedy  suggests  a 
consideration  that  may  be  translated,  at  least  partially,  into  the  terms  used 
in  this  discussion.  His  recognition  of  the  social  as  playing  an  important  part 
in  comedy  is  borne  out  from  the  psychological  and  genetic  points  of  view  by 
one  of  the  most  recent  books  on  the  subject,  Sully's  Essay  on  Laughter,  in 
which  the  writer  says:  "Much,  at  least,  of  our  laughter  ....  may 
undoubtedly  be  regarded  as  directed  to  something  which  fails  to  comply  with 
a  social  requirement,  yet  so  trifling  that  we  do  not  feel  called  upon  to  judge 
the  shortcoming  severely."  He  sums  up  the  social  advantages  of  the  comic 
as  follows:  "the  maintenance  of  customs  which  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  community,  or  of  some  class  of  the  community,  are  to  be  regarded  as 
good,  the  keeping-down  of  vices  and  follies,  and  the  furtherance  of  social 
co-operation."  Psychologically  he  shows  that  the  social  value  of  the 
comic  resides  in  its  immediate  and  high  contagiousness.  "Laughter  is 
social  in  the  sense  that  it  is  essentially  choral  and  so  uniting.  A  gathering 
of  yokels  at  a  fair  laughing  at  a  clown  tends  for  the  moment  to  become  a 
coherent  group;  and  the  habit  of  laughing  together  will  tend  to  consolidate 
the  group."*  This  has  to  do,  however,  with  the  effect  of  the  comic  rather 
than  with  its  intrinsic  character. 

In  making  a  rough  formulation  of  the  comic  in  terms  of  the  consider- 
ations used  in  this  paper,  I  should  say  that  in  the  first  place  the  co-ordina- 

1  J.  Sully,  Essay  on  Laughter,  chap  v. 

2  The  Physiology  oj  Laughter:  Essays,  Vol.  I. 

3  Aesthetik,  pp.  575-84. 

4  Op.  cit.,  pp.  139,  255. 


THE   TYPES   OF   AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  I05 

tion  set  up  in  the  comic  experience  is  less  wide  in  its  range  than  is  that  in 
the  tragic  experience,  makes  less  arduous  demands  upon  all  parts  of  the 
organism.  It  never  reaches  the  compass  that  gives  rise  to  a  sense  of  the 
sublime.  Its  strains  and  tensions  are  less  keen;  its  texture,  so  to  speak, 
is  more  loosely  woven  and  flexible.  There  is  a  marginal  supply  of  energy 
ready  to  spill  over  into  laughter  through  the  sluiceways  of  involuntary 
discharge.  And  the  character  of  its  substitutions  is  markedly  different. 
In  tragedy  the  element  of  expectation  plays  a  controlling  rdle;  but  that  of 
surprise  is  lacking  or  subordinate.  The  alternations  of  tension  and  relief 
are  borne  on  a  mounting  and  then  resurgent  wave;  they  are  bounded  and 
controlled  by  a  growing  awareness  of  the  whole.  That  is  to  say,  the  sub- 
stitutions involved  are  those  of  the  component  parts,  of  details  within  the 
major  rhythm  or  pattern.  There  is  from  the  first  a  ''forecast  of  the  end." 
But  in  comedy  the  substitutions  seem  to  be  on  a  larger  scale,  to  involve  a 
sudden  voUejace  of  expectation,  a  putting  into  the  place  of  what  we  have 
been  looking  for,  of  something  equivalent  so  far  as  amount  of  activity  is  con- 
cerned, but  of  markedly  different  constitution.  This  quick  exchange  of 
one  kind  of  total  co-ordination  for  another  brings  in  the  element  of  sur- 
prise. It, serves  in  itself  as  a  further  stimulus,  raising  the  whole  activity 
tone  and  seftirig  free  some  of  this  new  energy  in  laughter.  Such  an  ex- 
perience freshens  and  invigorates.  It  is  brisk  and  tonic.  Thus,  while  the 
effect  of  tragedy  is  more  directly  emotional  and  reflective,  that  of  comedy, 
because  of  this  sudden  influx  of  novel  stimulation,  is  at  first  reflex  and 
external.  In  terms  of  content,  the  substitution  is  generally  that  of  indi- 
vidual idiosyncrasy  for  social  convention;  in  terms  of  mental  pattern,  that 
of  a  concentrated  complex  of  newly  integrated  activities  for  a  more  extended 
group  of  well-established  habits.  The  total  amount  of  energy  involved 
may  be  the  same,  or  it  may  be  less  in  the  complex  substituted.  But  in 
either  case  the  distribution  of  tensions  is  widely  different,  and  the  substi- 
tution of  one  group  for  the  other  produces  a  pleasant  shock  of  surprise. 
This  shock  of  substitution  does  not  correspond  altogether  to  Kant's 
nullified  or  annihilated  expectation.  The  expectation  is  satisfied,  but  in 
an  unexpected  way.  This  unexpected  outcome,  however,  must  not  be  such 
as  to  overthrow  the  experience  altogether.  In  general,  of  course,  there 
are  unexpected  substitutions  that  are  in  the  highest  degree  serious  and 
disagreeable.  But  they  disrupt  the  experience  as  such.  Professor  Lillien 
J.  Martin's  recent  and  interesting  "Experimental  Prospecting  in  the  Field 
of  the  Comic"*  reports  that  her  returns  show  that  contrast,  or  incongruity, 
"disappointed" — or,  as  I  should  prefer  to  call  it,  reversed — expectation, 
I  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XVI. 


IC56  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

and  novelty — what  I  have  called  surprise — are  important  and  prevalent 
elements  in  the  comic  experience.  Sully  holds  that  "it  seems  probable 
that  the  part  played  by  surprise  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  laughable  has  been 
exaggerated;"  instancing  our  enjoyment  of  a  perfectly  famihar  comic 
situation.  But  psychologically  surprise  is  more  subtle  than  we  are  wont  to 
regard  it;  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  no  experience  remains  comic 
unless  there  is  present  some  unexpected  turn  to  present  expectation  or 
attitude.  What  we  expect  normally  is  conformity  to  some  sort  of  social 
canon;  what  happens  is  individual  deviation  from  this  canon.  This 
world  of  social  standard  and  usage  is  commonly  recognized  as  a  world  not 
concerned  with  life  and  death  issues.  It  is  essentially  the  world  of  every- 
day conduct,  of  that  immediate  experience  which  is  too  routine  to  rise  to 
the  aesthetic  level,  except  when  some  aspect  of  it  assumes  this  pattern  of 
reversed  expectation.  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  more  serious  things 
of  life  appear  comic  only  to  two  classes  of  people — those  who  take  them 
at  their  face  value  without  probing  below  the  surface,  and  those  who  have 
searched  them  out  so  deeply  that  they  have  become  for  them  familiar  matters 
of  everyday  experience.  As  has  been  said,  one  must  be  very  shallow  or 
very  profound  to  find  life  as  a  whole  the  human  comedy.  Tragedy  may 
teach  us  to  "see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole;"  but  Comedy  teaches  us  to 
find  an  element  of  aesthetic  satisfaction  even  in  incomplete  and  partial 
views. 

There  may  be  said  to  be  two  forms  of  ugliness — the  ugliness  of  monotony 
and  the  ugliness  of  confusion.  The  awareness  of  either  kind  arises  only 
as  activity  becomes  in  some  way  arrested,  so  that  attention  dwells  upon 
the  situation.  If  no  new  mode  of  procedure  offers  itself  within  a  reasonable 
time,  consciousness  becomes  su£fused  in  the  one  case  with  a  feeling  of  the 
niggardliness  and  meagerness  of  the  situation;  in  the  other,  with  a  feeling 
of  jangle  and  bewilderment.  In  the  first  case  there  is  greater  store  of 
energy  seeking  outlet  than  there  are  outlets  offered;  in  the  other,  there  are 
more  solicitations  than  there  is  equipment  for  response  and  co-ordination. 
But  in  both  cases  there  is  inhibition  and  consequent  emotional  distturbance. 
It  is  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between  the  ugly  and  the  unpleasant  or  pain- 
ful. But  in  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  more  quickly  some  specific  line  of 
action  presents  itself,  the  less  consciousness  there  is  of  the  ugliness  of  the 
situation.  It  is  only  as  we  are  obliged  to  contemplate  an  unsatisfactory 
situation  as  a  whole,  without  being  able  to  react  toward  it  in  any  efficient 
way,  that  the  iron  of  the  ugly  enters  into  our  souls.  That  a  thing  be  ugly 
as  well  as  unpleasant  or  painful,  it  is  necessary  that  there  be  a  margin  of 
energy  over  and  above  that  needed  to  preserve  life  and  to  win  its  obvious 


THE  TYPES  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  I07 

Utilities.  It  is  when  we  are  competent  to  cope  with  a  situation,  but  are 
externally  prevented,  that  we  know  the  full  meaning  of  the  ugly.  If  we 
are  exhausted  by  a  routine  of  narrow  habits,  if  they  make  unremitting 
drains  upon  us,  consciousness  sinks  to  a  dull  level  at  which  there  is  neither 
ugliness  nor  beauty.  We  live  in  a  world  of  stimulations  rather  than  of 
objects.  Nothing  that  approaches  aesthetic  realization  can  exist  under  such 
fixed  and  circumscribed  conditions.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  crowding 
and  conflicting  stimulations  threaten  disruption  of  our  world  or  of  our- 
selves, we  must  either  succumb  or  respond  to  one  stimulus  and  cease  to  be 
aware  of  the  others.  Here,  too,  we  do  not  construct  the  object  with  anything 
like  aesthetic  fulness.  Neither  is  there  chance  for  the  emergence  of  the  ugly, 
which  is  temporary  engrossment  in  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  a  situation. 
It  is  a  realization  of  the  essential  character  of  the  situation. 

As  stimulus,  this  experience  of  the  ugly  may  function  in  two  ways.  It 
may  lead  negatively  to  any  sort  of  action  that  will  o£fer  escape,  drown  out  the 
recollection  of  the  ugly  situation.  Or  it  may  lead  positively,  in  the  case  of 
the  ugliness  of  poverty  of  stimulation,  to  an  enrichment  of  the  situation; 
in  the  case  of  the  ugUness  of  confusion,  to  an  endeavor  to  bring  order  out 
of  disorder,  to  achieve  harmonious  control. 

In  this  sense  of  positive  stimulus  the  ugly  has  a  place  in  any  theory  of 
aesthetics,  at  least  as  a  limiting  term,  marking  one  sort  of  initiation  of  the 
aesthetic.  When  the  ugly  appears  as  an  organic  part  of  the  aesthetic 
experience  proper,  it  practically  forfeits  its  right  to  the  name.  As  the 
grotesque,  the  characteristic,  etc.,  it  becomes  a  contributory  factor  in 
the  total  effect;  and  has  no  lawful  place  therein,  unless  it  is  offset  by 
some  compensating  element  or  is  itself  resolved  in  the  culmination  of  the 
experience. 


PART  IV 

SOME  PHILOSOPHICAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  THE  AESTHETIC 
EXPERIENCE 

According  to  the  fundamental  hypothesis  of  this  analysis  of  the  aesthetic, 
it  marks  the  culminating  stage  of  development  in  every  reorganization  of 
experience.  It  may  not  be  recognized  as  aesthetic,  but  it  constitutes  the 
element  of  value  or  worth;  and  is  therefore  necessarily  present  in  both  the 
logical  and  the  ethical,  using  these  terms  in  their  customary  sense,  as  apply- 
ing to  typical  and  distinctive  forms  of  experience.  More  truly,  logic,  as 
dealing  with  the  judgment  process,  is  basic.  The  aesthetic  ''pause  of 
satisfaction"  marks  the  attainment  of  new  control;  it  is  the  signal  for  the 
resumption  of  action.  But  for  the  moment  it  looks  upon  the  thing  to  be 
done  as  already  done.  The  end  and  the  means  coalesce.  It  stands  for  a 
complete  redintegration  of  experience. 

This  aesthetic  aspect  or  moment  in  every  judgment-process  has  been 
remarked.     Groos  says: 

Zweitens  darf  ein  psychologische  Aesthetik  auch  die  Lust  an  der  gewonnenen 
Erkenntniss  nicht  ubersehen,  die  von  dem  Verstandniss-Urtheil  aus  in  die  asthe- 
tische  Anschauung  eindringt.  Meinong  nennt  in  seinen  "  Untersuchungen  zur 
Wert-Theorie "  (1894,  S.  36  f)  diese  Lust  ein  "Wissengefuhl  im  Gegensatz  zu  den 
dem  Inhalt  entspringenden  Wertgefuhlen."' 

Professor  Ormond  makes  the  statement  more  explicitly  and  holds  such  a 
conception  essential  to  a  true  understanding  of  judgment. 

In  the  last  analysis,  if  a  representation  fits  into  the  unity  of  our  world,  which, 
by  hypothesis,  is  the  highest  conceivable  to  us  in  this  stage  of  our  experience,  it  is 

accepted  as  true,  and  becomes  a  part  of  our  world-representation Are  we 

not  logically  drawn  to  the  conclusion,  then,  that  judgment  is  distinctively  an 
aesthetic  function  ?    In  view  of  this  question,  I  think  it  vitally  important  that  the 

aesthetic  character  of  judgment  should  be  recognized The  function  of 

judgment  is  an  affair  of  the  aesthetic  consciousness,  inasmuch  as  the  relation  of 

true  and  false  is  constituted  by  the  aesthetic  category  of  unity But  it  is 

also  important  to  be  remembered  that  unity  as  above  developed  is  epistemolo- 
gical  and  not  distinctively  a  category  of  art.' 

I  am  not  concerned  here  with  Professor  Ormond 's  full  theory  of  judgment. 
It  is  sufl&cient  to  point  out  that  he  considers  the  unity  attained  at  the  con- 

»  Der  aesthetische  Genuss,  p.  132. 
*  Foundations  0}  Knowledge,  p.  238. 

108 


PHILOSOPHICAL  IMPLICATIONS   OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE     I09 

elusion  of  the  judgment-process  essentially  aesthetic.  This  is  exactly  my 
view  of  the  "pause  of  satisfaction." 

The  aesthetic,  then,  marks  one  limit  of  the  judgment,  as  the  experience 
of  "shock,"  interruption,  "pure  sensation,"  in  the  immediate,  not  the  critical, 
sense  marks  the  other.*  The  actual  overt  fulfilment  of  the  judgment 
must  be  recognized  as  a  new  experience,  though  it  is  its  goal  and  often 
leads  to  its  revision.^  Furthermore,  this  aesthetic  limit,  this  unification 
and  consolidation  of  all  the  aspects  of  a  previously  disturbed  situation  so  that 
we  may  go  on  to  another  situation,  is  what  we  ordinarily  mean  by  the 
formation  of  a  concept.  If  the  emotion-content  at  the  initiation  of  a  logical 
or  judgment  process  is  a  sensation,  the  emotion-content  at  its  conclusion 
is  a  concept.  Professor  Kate  Gordon  has  ably  contended  for  the  recognition 
of  the  concept  as  an  emotional  category: 

A  concept  is  an  image  which  functions  for  more  than  one  situation,  or  it  is 

the  principle  of  identity  between  two  or  more  different  things — it  is  generic 

Our  apprehension  by  concept  is  an  implicit  apprehension;  when  we  say  "animal" 
we  are  not  aware  of  every  animal  we  ever  saw,  but  we  have  a  feeling  of  possibilities 

which  could  find  adequate  expression  only  in  a  long  series  of  images What 

we  immediately  have  is  an  emotional  state — an  appreciation  without  perfect 
discrimination. 3 

She  says  further:  "Meaning  depends  upon  the  possibihty  of  making 
one  thing,  an  emotion,  stand  for  other  things,  thoughts,  i.  e.,  on  the  possi- 
bility of  using  symbols."  We  have  already  seen  the  pause  of  satisfaction 
has  this  unitary  emotional  character,  represents  many  undefined  possi- 
bilities. So  that  I  think  we  may  fairly  say  that  the  concept  is  not  only 
emotional,  but  also  essentially  aesthetic.  Looked  at  in  its  retrospective 
aspect,  we  may  call  the  pause  of  satisfaction  aesthetic;  looked  at  in  its 
prospective  aspect,  we  may  call  it  the  concept.  But  the  two  aspects  are 
not  to  be  conceived  in  isolation.  They  are  correlative  and  interpret  each 
other.  This  statement  of  the  aesthetic  in  terms  of  the  concept  supple- 
ments and  makes  more  adequate  the  psychological  statement  made  earlier 
in  the  discussion  regarding  the  distinction  between  the  "aesthetic  image" 
and  the  "working  image  (cf.  pp.  17,  18,  32,  33). 

The  aesthetic  moment  thus  has  two  uses.  It  indicates  completed 
reconstruction,  and  it  serves  as  the  "emotional  deposit"  that  is  carried 
over  and  forms  the  basis  of  new  experiences,   mediate   or  immediate. 

1  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  VII,  "The  Nature  of  Hypothesis"  (M.  L. 
Ashley),  pp.  153,  154. 

2  Ibid.,  XI,  "Some  Logical  Aspects  of  Purpose"  (A.  W.  Moore),  pp.  350,  351. 

3  The  Psychology  of  Meaning,  pp.  62,  63. 


no  THE  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE 

It  is  the  "psychical  disposition"  upon  which  both  familiarity  and  growth 
depend. 

?  In  its  commonly  recognized  form  as  a  distinctive  type  of  experience, 
the  aesthetic  may  be  set  over  against  the  logical  and  the  ethical  in  the 
sense  in  which  immediate  experience  may  be  set  over  against  mediate. 
Both  the  logical  and  the  ethical  represent  experience  in  the  making  or, 
rather,  in  the  remaking,  under  active  reconstruction.  In  them  conscious- 
ness is  divided,  reflective;  subject  and  object,  means  and  ends,  are  still 
held  apart.  They  stand  for  struggle  and  for  resolution  of  difficulties  in 
a  more  or  less  serial  form.  Each,  as  I  have  said,  involves  the  aesthetic 
phase,  but  it  does  not  ordinarily  become  conspicuous  or  detached  for 
consciousness,  although  it  is  unmistakable  in  the  glow  of  intellectual  absorp- 
tion and  achievement,  in  the  satisfaction  of  moral  victory.  These  expe- 
riences are  sometimes  excluded  from  the  aesthetic  field,  but  only  through 
an  arbitrary  limitation  of  the  term  to  experience  of  sense  objects.^  It  is 
obvious  that  the  aesthetic  does  not  attach  itself  to  any  one  system  or  type 
of  thought.  It  fvurnishes,  rather,  the  basis  and  stimulus  of  many  possible 
systems  and  types  of  thought.  It  is,  as  I  have  phrased  it,  a  reservoir  of  , 
experiences. 

As  a  remembered  experience  the  aesthetic  has  an  important  function 
in  serving  as  an  ideal  of  organization,  a  limit  to  be  reached  in  every  processj 
This  is  implied  in  what  I  have  said  of  value  as  essentially  aesthetic.  In  this 
character  it  holds  good  only  as  a  standard  of  attainment  for  each  individual 
process;  but,  like  other  stages  in  particular  and  recurrent  activities,  it  has 
been  illegitimately  generalized  into  the  conception  of  a  fixed  goal  to  be 
reached  or  an  absolute  standard  to  be  lived  up  to.  Spencer's  state  of 
"absolute  ethics,"'  F.  C.  S.  Schiller's  recent  lapse  from  his  "Humanistic" 
position  by  the  postulation  of  an  aesthetic  "Ultimate, "3  place  this  fixed 
and  universal  ideal  in  the  future;  the  "Absolute"  of  the  modern  idealists, 
the  "Ideas"  of  Plato,  refer  it  to  the  past  or  to  a  timeless  existence.  But 
the  abstraction  from  the  situation  is  alike  in  both  cases. 

A  ghost  of  this  sort  of  abstraction  clings,  as  I  read  it,  to  Baldwin's 
statement  of  what  he  christens  "aesthenomic  idealism."     He  puts  it  thus: 

Philosophy  asks:    How  can  we  think    reality  in  one   thought?  ....  The 
present  writer  holds  that  the  category  of  final  interpretation  must  be  a  full  one, 

not  an  empty  one,  if  it  is  to  have  concrete  significance It  is  to  be  sought 

in  the  interpretation  of  the  actual  coefficients  of  the  fullest  reality  of  which  we 

1  Calkins,  Introduction  to  Psychology,  p.  283. 

2  Principles  of  Ethics,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  "The  Data  of  Ethics,"  chaps,  xv,  xvii. 

3  Humanism,  Essay  XI,  "  On  Preserving  Appearances." 


PHILOSOPHICAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  AESTHETIC  EXPERIENCE     III 

have  experience The  fullest,   not  the  emptiest,   the  concrete  experience, 

not  the  logical  universal,  is  the  point  of  view  of  most  adequate  interpretation 

When  we  speak  of  final  or  absolute  experience,  what  we  mean,  if  we  mean  any- 
thing worth  while,  is  an  all-comprehensive  and  completely  full  experience. 

Now — to  state  a  point  of  view,  not  to  expand  or  justify  it — there  is  a  type  of 
mental  organization  which  is  in  certain  ways  "fuller"  than  any  other,  which 
requires  and  feeds  upon — or,  to  speak  philosophically,  "transcends" — the  oppo- 
sition between  fact,  with  its  formulations  in  the  Equations  of  positive  science  on 
the  one  hand,  and  purposes,  ends,  values,  and  Progressions  on  the  other  hand; 
it  is  what  is  commonly  known  as  the  Aesthetic  experience.  In  the  essential  union 
!  of  the  two  points  of  view  respectively  of  the  "producer"  and  the  "spectator" 
from  which  a  work  of  art  may  be  approached,  we  find  in  our  experience  the  richer 
whole.  In  aesthetic  contemplation  there  is  the  fulfilment  at  once  of  the  demands 
for  a  system  of  relations  essentially  finished  and  formulated — something  com- 
pletely true — and  also  the  satisfactions  of  a  genetic  idea  of  perfect  outcome — 
something  divinely  fair.' 

If  this  means  to  postulate  a  final  "all-comprehensive  and  completely 
full  experience,"  the  notion  seems  to  me  inherently  contradictory.  Such 
an  experience  would  result  either  in  monotony,  lowering,  and  perhaps 
even  extinction,  of  consciousness,  or  in  a  new  experience  that  was  fuller 
still.  It  is  fairer  to  Baldwin,  and  more  in  keeping  with  his  whole  way  of 
thinking,  to  interpret  him  as  meaning  that  our  fullest  aesthetic  realization 
at  any  one  time  of  the  unity  of  our  world  is  for  us  at  that  time  "the  Abso- 
lute," and  that  this  conception  broadens  and  deepens  with  the  growth 
and  enrichment  of  our  experience. 

This  is  the  position  that  I  have  attempted  to  set  forth  in  this  treatment 
of  the  aesthetic  experience.  The  aesthetic  as  a  highly  distinctive  type  of 
experience  profoundly  afifects  consciousness,  and  leads  to  new  situations 
and  new  demands  for  reconstruction  and  wider  control.  A  fixed  and 
unchangeable  aesthetic  attitude  is  a  contradiction  in  terms  and  an  anomaly 
in  experience.  On  the  contrary,  the  richer  and  more  comprehensive 
the  control  in  any  one  situation,  the  greater  is  the  incentive  to  "things 
unattempted  yet  in  prose  or  rhyme." 

I  "Mind  and  Body  from  the  Genetic  Point  of  View,"  Psychological  Review,  Vol. 
X,  pp.  245,  246. 


INDEX 


Activity,  9,  10,  27,  29,  69,  78;  aesthetic,  19-21; 
feeling  of,  10,  13,  13;  serial  and  simultaneous 
types  of,  13,  17,  18,  32-33,  61,  62,  86,  91,  loi; 
activity  theories,  79,  81-86. 

Aesthetic,  the:  categories  of,  21,  22,  68,  77-79, 
87-96;  definition  of,  27,  28;  description  of, 
S,  19,  20,  23,  24,  34.  35.  46,  64,  66,  77,  78,  8i, 
89,  90,  92;  emotional  nature  of,  62-65,  74, 
78;  racial  evolution  of,  48-61;  great  periods  of, 
37-47;  the  aesthetic  moment,  30-33,  35,  46, 
47,  72,  84;  social  nature  of,  72-79,  80,  8i; 
types  of,  96-107. 

Allen,  G.,  21,  25,  33,  34. 

Angell,  J.  R.,  7,  13,  16. 

Art:  Greek,  40,  41;  modem,  44-46;  primitive, 
53-60;  Renaissance,  43;  as  representation  and 
as  design,  56,  60,  93,  94;  art  and  leisure,  56, 
60,  62. 

Artist  class,  61,  62. 

Ashley,  M.  L.,  109. 

Attention,  10,  11,  13,  29,  33,  50,  56,  59,  65,  69, 
75i  90>  92,  106. 

Bain,  A.,  22,  25. 

Balance,  87,  88,  90,  93,  loi,  102. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  26,  69,  83,  8s,  92.  no,  in. 

Beauty,  27,  87,  99,  100. 

Berenson,  B.,  22,  24,  73,  76,  82., 

Bosanquet,  B.,  79,  96. 

Bucher,  K.,  25,  59,  73. 

Burke,  E.,  99. 

Calkins,  M.  W.,  65,  no. 

Categories,  ae.sthetic,  21-23,  68,  77,  78,  87-96. 

Characteristic,  the,  87,  95,  96,  107. 

Comic,  the,  87,  103-6. 

Communication,  74,  77,  79,  81. 

Compulsion,  12,  85. 

Concept,  the,  92,  109. 

Conduct,  7,  10,  XI,  17. 

Consciousness:    aesthetic,  20,  72,  73,  77,  78,  84, 

91,  96,  97,  100,  106,  107,  no;   general  nature 

of,  6-9,  13,  16,  17,  19,  23,  26,  27,  30,  48,  49, 

68,  69;   social,  72,  73,  74,  77. 
Contagion,  68,  104. 
Contrast,  88,  89,  102,  103,  105,  106. 
Control,  6,  8,  9,  11,  15,  52,  53,  57,  60,  64,  81,  88, 

94,  97,  108,  III. 
Co-ordination,  13,  14,  16,  28,  29,  31,  32,  33,  70, 

81,  88,  89,  90,  92,  96,  97,  98,  100,  106. 

Darwin,  C,  63,  66. 
Dewey,  J.,  7,  11,  12,  63,  69. 
Drama,  the,  54,  58,  S9,  101-3. 

Economy,  87,  96. 

EfiFort,  12,  65,  70. 

EinjiUdung,  26,  82,  83. 

Emotion:  aesthetic,  20,  22,  32,  34,  46,  62-64,  67, 
72,  73.  74,  75.  78,  79,  109;  expression  of  emo- 
tion theories,  79-82;  nature  of,  29,  42,  53,  62- 
65;  social  character  of,  74,  75. 


Ends,  6,  8,  10,  12,  17,  21,  29,  30,  33,  59,  73,  77, 

78,  88,  108. 
Enhancement,  19,  20,  23,  32,  34,  40,  43,  45,  46, 

64,  73.  74.  78,  82,  89,  96,  99,  100. 
Equilibrium,  32,  33,  35,  46,  90,  96,  100,  loi. 
Ethical,  the,  7,  32,  65,  108,  110. 
Evolution:  biologic,  13,  24,  47,  48,  63,  65;  social 

47,  48,  50. 
Expectation,  19,  31,  94,  95,  103,  104,  105. 

Experience,  5,  9-13;  19,  aesthetic,  19-21,  75,  77> 
89,  90,  91,  98,  103,  109,  no;  definition  of, 
26,  27;  growth  of,  69-71;  immediate,  11-13, 
21,  23,  27,  28,  29,  68,  77,  79,  8i,  86;  mediate, 
II,  28,  81,  88;   racial,  26,  65,  70,  71. 

Fechner,  G.  T.,  21,  25,  92. 

Festival,  54,  55,  58,  59. 

Freytag,  G.,  loi. 

Functional  Psychology,  6-19,  23,  28,  32,  79. 

Gordon,  K.,  34,  35,  53,  109. 
Greece,  aesthetic  period  in,  37-40. 
Groos,  K.,  20,  75,  8s,  86,  108. 
Gummere,  F.  B.,  25,  54,  59,  60. 
Guyau,  J.  M.,  34. 

Habit,    9,  10,  II,  12,  13,  32,  34,  48,  50,  97,  98; 

group  habits,  57,  69, 
Harmony,  87,  88. 
Hirn,  I.,  25,  34,  40,  54,  79,  81,  82,  86. 

Illusion,  aesthetic,  84,  85. 

Image,  14-17,    76,  82,  83,  92;   aesthetic,  18,  33, 

109;   working,  17,  18,  109. 
Imitation,  68,  70,  92;    "inner  imitation,"  26,  81, 

8s. 
Impulse,  13,  14,  16,  65,  69,  70,  74,  80,  81,  86. 
Individual,  and  society,  53,  55,  68,  69,  70. 
Infection,  aesthetic,  77,  79. 
Inhibition,  16,  29,  35,  50,  70,  76,  96,  100,  106. 
Interest,  9,  10,  12,  78. 

James,  W.,  8,  9,  49,  55,  63,  74,  75. 
Judgment:   aesthetic,  27,  67,  79,  108,  109;   criti- 
cal, 28,  66,  67,  68,  79,  84. 

Kant,  22,  44,  99,  100,  104,  105. 

Lange,  K.,  26,  84,  85. 

Lee,  v.,  24,  26,  64,  65,  75,  82. 

Lipp>s,  T.,  26,  34,  82,  83,  104. 

Logical,  the,  7,  87,  108,  no. 

Macbeth,  loi,  102. 

Marshall,  H.  R.,  20,  22,  79,  80,  81,  86. 

Martin,  L.  J.,  105,  106. 

MacDougall,  R.,  31,  93. 

McLennan,  S.  F.,  67. 

Mead,  G.  H.,  16,  72. 

Meaning,  7,  35,  67,  109. 

Moore,  A.  W.,  n,  30,  109. 

Moulton,  R.  G.,  101,  102. 


113 


114 


INDEX 


Music,  45,  46,  p4. 

Novel,  45. 

Object,  the,  9,  14,  16,  56,  69,  70-72,  76,  77,   99, 
100,  107;  aesthetic,  20,  27,  72,  79,  83;  physical, 

68,  69,  70,  71,  72,  88,  96;  social,  69,  70-72. 
Objectivity,  8;    and  subjectivity,  12,  22,  27,  68, 

78,  81,  83,  9p. 
Order,  88,  89. 
Organism,  the  organic,  7,  8,  9,  13,  I4i  47.  48,  64, 

69,  76,  82,  90. 

Origins,  47;  aesthetic,  47-65. 
Ormond,  A.  T.,  108. 

Pattern,  19,  32,  59,  76,  89,  90,  93,  97,  loi,  103. 

Pierce,  E.,  loi. 

Plato,  68,  no. 

Play,  21,  s6,  57,  62,  84,  85,  86. 

Pleasure:   aesthetic,  21,  22,  29,  30,  34,  78;    and 

pain,  12,  13,  81,  106,  107. 
Proportion,  87,  88. 
PuSer,  E.  D.,  35,  93,  102. 

Reality,  72,  79,  85. 

Reconstruction,    29,  30,  33,  48,  49,  55,  90,  91, 

108,  III. 
Reflective  thought,  10,  11,  15,  28-30,  74,  75,  78, 

79,  88,  100;   and  the  aesthetic,  66,  67,  79. 
Relief,  19,  33,  40,  41.  45.  89,  102,  103,  105. 
Renaissance,  41-43. 

Response,  14,  69,  70,  76,  77,  82,  85,  86,  106. 
Restraint,  95. 
Rhythm,  19,  30-32,  48,  58,  59,  87,  88,  89,  90,  94, 

95,  loi,  102,  103. 
Romantic  movement,  44,  45. 
Royce,  J.,  30. 

Santayana,  G.,  21,  24,  35,  81,  100. 

Satisfaction,  12,  13,  29,  30,  31,  33,  50,  55,  61,  78, 

99,  103,  107;    "pause  of,"  30,  32,  34,  64,  72, 

83,  97,  108,  109. 
Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  no. 


Selection,  8,  92. 

Self,  the,  12,  69,  70;   the    social,  69,  70,  72,  77, 

100. 
Self -exhibition,  79,  83,  84,  86. 
Sensation,  10,  16,  17,  i8,  67,  109. 
" Shareableness,"  22,  23. 
Simplicity,  88. 
Significant,  the,  95. 
Social,  the,  77,  79,  80,  82,  84,  85,  92. 
Society,  tyjies  of,  48-57,  68. 
Spencer  and  Gillen,  55. 
Spencer,  H.,  25,  26,  65,  85,  96,  104,  no. 
Stetson,  R.  H.,  31,  94. 

Stimulation,  19,  33,  34.  41. 43.  45.  S3. 89,  103.  107. 
Stimulus,  14,  18,  19,  32,  48,  49,  SI.  69.  70.  73.  98, 

105. 
Stuart,  H.  W.,  9,  67. 
Sturt,  H.,  73-  ■ 

Sublime,  the,  87,  99-101,  103,  105. 
Subjectivity,  12,  22,  27,  68,  72,  74,  78,  99. 
Substitution,  16,  90,  91-93,  97,  101,  102,  105. 
Suggestion,  68,  76,  77. 
Sully,  J.,  25,  104,  106. 
Surprise,  105,  106. 
Symmetry,  87,  88,  89,  93,  102. 
Sympathy,  68,  76. 

Tanner,  A.  E.,  56- 
Thomas,  W.  I.,  62. 
Tragic,  the,  101-3,  105. 
Tufts,  J.  H.,  22,  78. 

Ugly,  the,  87,  106,  107. 

Unity,  in  variety,  87,  88,  89;  aesthetic,  83.  84,  90, 

97,  100,  103,  108. 
Universality,  22,  23,  68,  79. 

Value,  7,  8,  27,  33,  67,  76.  108,  no. 
Veblen,  T.  B.,  60. 


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